(Mostly) UNIX Quotes

Various quotes, mostly UNIX related, which I've accrued over the years from various sources.

Well my terminal's locked up and I ain't got any Mail And I can't recall the last time that my program didn't fail I've got stacks in my structs, I've got arrays in my queues I've got those: Segmentation violation -- Core dumped blues.

The wonderful thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from.

-- Grace Murray Hopper

Ken Thompson has an automobile which he helped design. Unlike most automobiles it has neither speedometer, nor gas gauge, nor any of the other numerous lights which plague the modern driver. Rather, if the driver makes a mistake, a giant “?” lights up in the corner of the dashboard. “The experienced driver”, says Thompson, “will usually know what’s wrong”.

-- Anonymous

The problem with sendmail is that the sendmail configuration file is a rule based expert system, but the world of email is not logical and sendmail configuration editors are not experts.

-- David Waitzman, BBN

I liken starting one’s computing career with UNIX, say as an undergraduate, to being born in East Africa. It is intolerably hot, your body is covered with lice and flies, you are malnourished and you suffer from numerous curable diseases. But, as far as young East Africans can tell, this is simply the natural condition and they live within it. By the time they find out differently, it is too late. They already think that the writing of shell scripts is a natural act.

-- Ken Pier, Xerox PARC

Not having sendmail is like not having VD

-- Ron Heiby – former moderator, comp.newprod

Usenet is a cesspool, a dung heap.

-- Patrick A. Townson

If the designers of X Windows built cars, there would be no fewer than five steering wheels hidden about the cockpit, none of which followed the same principles – but you’d be able to shift gears with your car stereo. Useful feature that.

-- Marcus J. Ranum, DEC

Programming X Windows is like trying to find the square root of Pi using roman numerals.

-- Unknown

I have a natural revulsion to any operating system that shows so little planning as to have named all of its’ components after digestive noises (awk, grep, fsck, nroff)

-- Unknown

Do not meddle in the affairs of UNIX, for it is subtle and quick to dump core.

-- Anonymous

“Yacc” was what I felt like doing after I learned how to use yacc(1)

-- Anonymous

If it was hard to write, it should be hard to understand.

-- A UNIX programmer

Q: Where did the names “C” and “C++” come from? A: They were grades.

-- Jerry Leichter

If C gives you enough rope to hang yourself, C++ gives you enough rope to bind and gag your neighbourhood, rig the sails in a small ship and still have enough rope left to hang yourself from the yardarm.

-- Anonymous

The “N” in NFS stands for Not, or Need, or perhaps Nightmare

--Harry Spencer

Gary
Gary Gale

I'm Gary ... a Husband, Father, CTO at Kamma, geotechnologist, map geek, coffee addict, Sci-fi fan, UNIX and Mac user