Fabulous Adventures In Coding : Quotes

Quotable Quotations, Part Three

Eric Lippert — Wed, 16 Jun 2004 21:22:00 GMT

I'm heads-down today trying to figure out a complicated new feature in Whidbey -- working out the differences between the spec and the code is proving to be quite a challenge! -- so today, another entry in my series on the wit and wisdom of the Visual Studio team:

Movie allusions

"This is established 'Alien vs. Predator' folklore."

"I cannot be stopped by mere bullets!"

"Neo could kick Yoda's ass!"

(Please discuss the latter.)

Baby talk

There have been a spate of reproductive successes on my team recently. Here's what happens when three developers try to coo over a newborn baby:

Developer #1: "Wow, she's like a really tiny human!"
Developer #2: "That's because she is a really tiny human."
Developer #3, aka “dad“: "Yes, she's the human equivalent of a 30% scaled in-place view control."

Not pretty. (The developers, that is -- the baby was cute.)

Why devs really do need PMs around to keep them in line

Dev #1: "If we pick one of the two interfaces at random, we're going to get it wrong 50% of the time. Customers aren't going to be happy about that."
Dev #2: "You're a real 'glass half empty' guy, aren't you? Think of all the millions of times we'll get it right!"

Dev: "Checkin suites are just another hurdle on the road to checking in broken code."

More on the Program Management / Development relationship

PM to Dev: "It is so unpleasant being me using this product. Jack, we have a date with a spreadsheet."

A PM on the necessity of cutting features vs. slipping schedules: "I have a hacksaw in my office for a reason."

(It's true -- he does have a hacksaw in his office. Weird.)

PM: "We need to get this fixed. I'm going to take this to [name of Microsoft Distinguished Engineer here]."
Dev: "Yeah! Do it! Get on his schedule! Call in all your favours!"
PM: "I already did. Do you have time to come to the meeting next week?"
Dev: "Whoa -- I don't want to get involved!"

And finally, my personal favourite for this month:

PM: "It's easy to be smart. It's being right that's hard."
Dev: "No, it's easy to be smart and right. It's convincing PMs that you're right that's hard."

Quotable Quotations, Part Two

Eric Lippert — Wed, 14 Apr 2004 02:11:00 GMT

I'm tremendously excited to learn that Joel Silver is producing a sequel to "Dungeons and Dragons". That movie was one of the cheesiest, chewiest, goofiest and lowest-grossing episodes of Scripting Goes To The Movies ever, and that's saying something. Say what you will about the plot, acting, set design and special effects; they certainly did an excellent job of capturing the inherent ridiculousness of the D&D gaming system. I was particularly fond of Richard O'Brien as a thief who builds elaborate traps for no apparent reason.

Rumour has it that the plot of the new movie is about some evil wizard -- big surprise there -- who steals some black magical orb dingus and chaos ensues. (Which, oddly enough, was exactly the plot of the last D&D game I played, which was some time ago. Nice to know that the classics never go out of style.)

I'm breathless with anticipation to see if they can top lines like "People of Izmer: you are now free!!!"

Speaking of bad dialogue, today is part two of my ongoing series on the wit and wisdom of the Visual Studio Tools For Office team. (Part one is here.)

"I value diversity -- but -- girls are weird."

"This feature will take thirty seconds to test." (Spoken by, you guessed it, a dev.)

"Now that is thinking in an entirely different box."

"I'm not Andrew Clinick; you can't whip me like you whip him!"

Devs are smart, but sometimes it takes a moment to deduce all logical consequences of a statement in realtime:

Dev: "I'll schedule you for five o'clock."
PM: "I can't make it then, I have to pick up my kid from day care."
Dev: "I didn't know you had kids!"
PM: "Yeah, I have a four year old."
Dev: "Really? Since when?"
PM: "Uh… just over four years actually."

And finally, a conversation that sums up the relationship between program management, development and quality assurance:

A PM: "Is there anything I can do for you?"
A Dev: "Go get me a coffee."
A Tester: "Here, let me taste that for you."

Quotable Quotations

Eric Lippert — Thu, 12 Feb 2004 17:53:00 GMT

When I was a teenager, I and a bunch of my more deviant friends would get together every Thursday evening and rent the most godawful horror movies we could find. We kept a running log of the most unintentionally amusing dialog, such as:

"I could easily kill you now, but I am determined to HAVE YOUR BRAIN!"

from "Doctor Butcher: Medical Deviant", also released under the title "Zombie Holocaust". This movie proves that the Italians made some of the best cannibal zombie movies in the 1980's.

"Charge! Once more into the breach, mothergrabbers! Let's purloin that water!"

from “Exterminators From The Year 3000“, which proves that the Italians made some of the worst post-apocalyptic movies in the 1980's.

I've kept in the habit of writing down ludicrous things people say, and since we have whiteboards along all the hallways here… well, let's just take a representative sampling of the wit and wisdom of the Visual Studio team:

"What do you mean 'we'll have to cut the feature'? This feature isn't even on the schedule yet!"

"Shouldn't we design this feature before we implement it?" [brief pause] "Ha ha ha ha ha!"

"It's not a design change, it's a design evolution."

"I value diversity -- but -- guys are weird."

"No, I can't tell you what it says in the spec. But I can tell you how I implemented it."

"We're going to QueryInterface the object for a magical IGeoff interface that will allow us to do wacky, incredible things. But I don't understand how it works yet because Geoff hasn't told me."

"Amsterdam is a great place to go if you're looking for cheese sandwiches."

And finally, my new personal favourite advice on how to ship high-quality software on time:

"Right now, doing the right thing for the product is the right thing to do."

Truer words were never spoken.