“If you remove stricture from a large Perl program currently, you're just installing delayed bugs, whereas with this feature, you're installing an instant bug that's easily fixed. Whoopee.”

—  Larry Wall

[199710050130.SAA04762@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "If you remove stricture from a large Perl program currently, you're just installing delayed bugs, whereas with this fea…" by Larry Wall?
Larry Wall photo
Larry Wall294
American computer programmer and author, creator of Perl 1954

Related quotes

“A bug! A bug! Isn’t it just so satisfying to discover bugs in other people’s programs? Especially people from Microsoft. I don’t know why, it’s probably some kind of Freudian code-envy thing.”

Paul DiLascia (1959–2008) American software developer

1995/6
About Microsoft

“…perhaps this is a "feature", not a bug….”

Paul DiLascia (1959–2008) American software developer

1995/10
About Microsoft

“"The question is, is that a bug or a feature?" Karl asked.”

Rick Cook (1944) American writer

The Wizardry Compiled (1989)

Richard Stallman photo

“When I released GNU Emacs and people started using it, they started sending me improvements in the mail. So I would get a message with a bug fix, and a message with a new feature, and another bug fix, and another new feature, and another… and another… until they were pouring in on me so fast that just taking advantage of all of the help people were giving me was a big job. Microsoft doesn't have this problem.”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

"The Free Software Movement and the GNU/Linux Operating System", address at LinuxTag (July 2000)
2000s

Larry Wall photo

“That is a known bug in 5.00550. Either an upgrade or a downgrade will fix it.”

Larry Wall (1954) American computer programmer and author, creator of Perl

[6vu1vo%2489c@kiev.wall.org, 1998]
Usenet postings, 1998

Kim Harrison photo

“Bug? You sack of sweat stink. I've got farts that smell sweeter than you. Think you're better than me? Poop ice cream cones, do you? Call me a bug! Rachel, let me do him now.”

Kim Harrison (1966) Pseudonym

Source: Dead Witch Walking

Nicholas Negroponte photo

“When you write a computer program you've got to not just list things out and sort of take an algorithm and translate it into a set of instructions. But when there's a bug — and all programs have bugs — you've got to debug it. You've got to go in, change it, and then re-execute … and you iterate. And that iteration is really a very, very good approximation of learning.”

Nicholas Negroponte (1943) American computer scientist

Nicholas Negroponte: A 30-year history of the future http://www.ted.com/talks/nicholas_negroponte_a_30_year_history_of_the_future, July 2014, TED Talks (about 13:40 into 19:43 video). <br class="br">A 30-year history of the future, TED Talk (2014)

Bill Gates photo

“There are no significant bugs in our released software that any significant number of users want fixed. … I'm saying we don't do a new version to fix bugs. We don't. Not enough people would buy it. You can take a hundred people using Microsoft Word. Call them up and say "Would you buy a new version because of bugs?" You won't get a single person to say they'd buy a new version because of bugs. We'd never be able to sell a release on that basis.”

Bill Gates (1955) American business magnate and philanthropist

Focus Magazine No. 43 (23 October 1995) http://www.cantrip.org/nobugs.html &lt;!-- pages 206-212 --&gt; <br class="br">1990s

Edsger W. Dijkstra photo

“Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence!”

Edsger W. Dijkstra (1930–2002) Dutch computer scientist

Dijkstra (1970) &quot; Notes On Structured Programming http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ewd02xx/EWD249.PDF&quot; (EWD249), Section 3 (&quot;On The Reliability of Mechanisms&quot;), corollary at the end. <br class="br">1970s <br class="br">Variant: Program testing can be a very effective way to show the presence of bugs, but it is hopelessly inadequate for showing their absence.

Related topics