Important programming truths

This page contains a number of important programming truths that every budding programmer should know about. These truths are self-evident, and need no explanations.

``If it compiles, it works.''

``If it compiles, it's correct.''

``If it runs, it doesn't have any bugs.''

``If it doesn't have any immediately obvious bugs, it's perfect.''

``If a bug doesn't show, it doesn't exist.''

``If it seems to work, it works.''

``Doing something right is easy. Avoiding errors only takes a bit of concentration.''

``The shorter the source code, the faster the program.''

``It's obvious how to optimize a program.''

``Prorammers don't make mistakes.''

``Run-time errors don't occur.''

``Users don't make mistakes.''

``I don't make mistakes.''

``Errors of any kind are rare.''

``Error handling can be done in version 2.''

``It's OK to crash on bad input.''

``It's OK to give incorrect output on bad input.''

``Portability isn't useful.''

``All the world's a VAX. Or, these days, an MS-DOS box''

``The length of the feature list is important.''

``Speed is good, features are better.''

``Slowness can be fixed in hardware.''

``The bigger a program is, the better it is.''

``Random changes to a program fix bugs.''

``Testing takes only a short while.''

``Finding bugs is easy. Fixing bugs is trivial.''

``Bug-fixes don't need to be tested.''

``Trivial changes of any kind don't need to be tested.''

``The first approach, idea, or version is always the best.''

``A 1% crash rate is actually pretty darn good.''

``Code is self-evident. Comments aren't needed.''

``Comments are meant for people other than the original author of the code.''

``Undocumented features are fun and useful.''

``It can always be fixed in the next version.''

``Surprised users are happy users.''

``Demonstrating for clients is the best debugging method.''


Lars Wirzenius