41 Awesome Software Testing & App Developer Quotes

Automating visual testing left us with less manual work and a lot more free time, so we searched for funny and thought-provoking quotes about software testing & quality (… and no, you won’t see the chewed-up “It’s not a bug, it’s an undocumented feature” quote here…).

Here are our top favorites (in no particular order):

(1) “f u cn rd ths, u cn gt a gd jb n sftwr tstng.” (Anonymous)

(2) “If debugging is the process of removing bugs, then programming must be the process of putting them in.” (Edsger Dijkstra)

(3) “Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live.” (Martin Golding)

(4) “Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it.” (Brian W. Kernighan)

(5) “Programming is like sex. One mistake and you have to support it for the rest of your life.” (Michael Sinz)

(6) “3 Biggest Software Lies:

The program’s fully tested and bug-free.
We’re working on the documentation.
Of course we can modify it.”

(Anonymous)

(7) “If you don’t like testing your product, most likely your customers won’t like to test it either.” (Anonymous)

(8) “With good program architecture debugging is a breeze, because bugs will be where they should be.” (David May)

(9) “Software testers do not make software; they only make them better.” (Anonymous)

(10) “Software testers succeed where others fail.” (Anonymous)

(11) “Don’t fix bugs later; fix them now.” (Steve Maguire)

(12) “If McDonalds were managed like a software company, 1 out of every 100 Big Macs would give you food poisoning, and the response would be, ‘We’re sorry, here’s a coupon for two more.’ ” (Mark Minasi)

(13) “Software testers always go to heaven; they’ve already had their fair share of hell.” (Anonymous)

(14) “The trouble with programmers is that you can never tell what a programmer is doing until it’s too late.” (Seymour Cray)

(15) “Never allow the same bug to bite you twice.” (Steve Maguire)

(16) “When debugging, novices insert corrective code; experts remove defective code.” (Richard Pattis)

(17) “If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.” (Gerald Weinberg)

(18) “Talk is cheap. Show me the code.” (Linus Torvalds)

(19) “Don’t worry if it doesn’t work right. If everything did, you’d be out of a job.” (Mosher’s Law of Software Engineering)

(20) “Optimism is an occupational hazard of programming; feedback is the treatment.” (Kent Beck)

(21) “Without requirements or design, programming is the art of adding bugs to an empty text file.” (Louis Srygley)

(22) “I don’t care if it works on your machine! We are not shipping your machine!” (Vidiu Platon)

(23) “There are two ways to write error-free programs; only the third one works.” (Alan J. Perlis)

(24) “Where is the ‘any’ key?” (Homer Simpson, trying to figure out the “Press any key” notification)

(25) “If you automate a mess, you get an automated mess.” (Rod Michael)

(26) “Don’t document the problem, fix it.” (Atli Björgvin Oddsson)

(27) “I think it’s a new feature. Don’t tell anyone it was an accident.” (Larry Wall)

(28) “Program testing can be a very effective way to show the presence of bugs, but is hopelessly inadequate for showing their absence.” (Edsger Dijkstra)

(29) “One man’s crappy software is another man’s full time job.” (Jessica Gaston)

(30) “Bad programmers have all the answers. Good testers have all the questions.” (Gil Zilberfeld)

(31) “A good programmer is someone who always looks both ways before crossing a one-way street.” (Doug Linder)

(32) “Deleted code is debugged code.” (Jeff Sickel)

(33) “Failure is not an option. It comes bundled with the software.” (Anonymous)

(34) “Blame doesn’t fix bugs.” (Anonymous)

(35) “Why do we never have time to do it right, but always have time to do it over?” (Murphy’s Law)

(36) “A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any invention in human history, with the possible exceptions of handguns and tequila.” (Mitch Radcliffe)

(37) “First do it, then do it right, then do it better.“ (Addy Osmani)

(38) “The bitterness of poor quality remains long after the sweetness of meeting the schedule has been forgotten.” (Karl Wiegers)

(39) “There are zero occurrences of the word “testing” in the Swift book.“ (Felipe Knorr Kuhn)

(40) “Engineers call them edge cases. I call them: what our users do.” (via @LooseWireStudio, w/ tnx to Noah Sussman)

(41) “Reminds me of the awesome bug report I saw once: ‘Everything is broken. Steps to reproduce: do anything. Expected result: it should work’.“ (Felipe Knorr Kuhn)

Got great quotes to add? Think we missed some hidden gem? We’ll be happy to hear from you! Let us know in the comments below.

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