The other day, a friend of mine posted a quote by Oscar Wilde.* It went like this:
“I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.”
The coder in me immediately was reminded of code review sessions where we looked for ways to improve the codebase in really nitpicky ways. Almost instantly, I hacked up the quote in my mind and posted the following:
I was working all morning on a code review, and added a comment.In the afternoon, I took it back out. #quotehack (Oscar Wilde)
— Jim Wilcox (@poliTechnosis) February 19, 2013
Like the original, it’s an exaggeration, of course, but there’s always that kernel of truth… sometimes you get caught up in little things that don’t pan out.
That got me thinking of a few other favorite quotes, and how an over-dedicated developer like myself might better relate to them.
Only developers who will risk overflowing arithmetic can possibly find out how badly they can crash their app.#quotehack (T.S. Elliot)
— Jim Wilcox (@poliTechnosis) February 19, 2013
“Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.”
foreach(object you in whatever) you = (good)1;#quotehack(A. Lincoln)This is a better version of the previous.:)
— Jim Wilcox (@poliTechnosis) February 20, 2013
“Whatever you are, be a good one.”
The hardest job rookie programmers face today is learning best practices without seeing any.#quotehack (Fred Astaire)
— Jim Wilcox (@poliTechnosis) February 20, 2013
“The hardest job kids face today is learning good manners without seeing any.”
The hardware determines what’s possible.The software surpasses it. #quotehack #dev (Pilar Coolinta)
— Jim Wilcox (@poliTechnosis) February 21, 2013
//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js“The mind determines what’s possible. The heart surpasses it.”
Going forward, I’m challenging myself to do a #quotehack of the day. I might even be inspired to do a breakdown blog post for some of them.
In any case, I invite you to follow along… I’ll probably continue to post from my phone, which cross posts to Facebook, Twitter, and Linked In all at once, so you can catch ’em from any of those & see if you can spot the original quote. Maybe it’ll be something you can relate to yourself .
* Joe Pace, author of a really cool sci-fi book called “Minotaur“.