Great Software Engineering Proverbs

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Here’s a nifty site with lots of software engineering quotes and maxims. Some of them hurt to laugh at because they’re so true, some are classics, and some are just hilarious.

Among the pearls of wisdom included on the site:

Everybody Knows:

• If you’ve found 3 bugs in a program, best estimate is that there are 3 more.
• 60% of product cost comes after initial shipment.

Yep, there’s a lightbulb joke for QA testers, too..

Q: How many QA testers does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: QA testers don’t change anything. They just report that it’s dark.

and…

We know about as much about software quality problems as they knew about the Black Plague in the 1600s. We’ve seen the victims’ agonies and helped burn the corpses. We don’t know what causes it; we don’t really know if there is only one disease. We just suffer — and keep pouring our sewage into our water supply.

– Tom Van Vleck

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