A software engineer, a hardware engineer and a department manager were on their way to a meeting in Switzerland. They were driving down a steep mountain road when suddenly the brakes on their car failed. The car careened almost out of control down the road, bouncing off the crash barriers, until it miraculously ground to a halt scraping along the mountainside.
The car’s occupants, shaken but unhurt, now had a problem: they were stuck halfway down a mountain in a car with no brakes. What were they to do?
“I know,” said the department manager, “Let’s have a meeting, propose a Vision, formulate a Mission Statement, define some Goals and by a process of Continuous Improvement find a solution to the Critical Problems, and we can be on our way.”
“No, no,” said the hardware engineer, “That will take far too long, and besides, that method has never worked before. I’ve got my Swiss Army knife with me, and in no time at all I can strip down the car’s braking system, isolate the fault, fix it and we can be on our way.”
“Well,” said the software engineer, “Before we do anything, I think we should push the car back up the road and see if it happens again.”
Two strings walk into a bar and sit down. The bartender says, “So what’ll it be?”
The first string says, “I think I’ll have a beer quag fulk boorg jdk^CjfdLk jk3s d#f67howe%^U r89nvy owmc63^Dz x.xvcu”
“Please excuse my friend,” the second string says, “He isn’t null-terminated.”
An UInt32 walks into a bar but only orders a glass of water. The bartender asks “are you sure that’s all you want?” The UInt32 responds, “I’m positive!”
A programmer is walking along a beach and finds a lamp. He rubs the lamp, and a genie appears. I am the most powerful genie in the world. I can grant you any wish, but only one wish.
The programmer pulls out a map, points to it and says, Id want peace in the Middle East.
The genie responds, Gee, I dont know. Those people have been fighting for millenia. I can do just about anything, but this is likely beyond my limits.
The programmer then says, Well, I am a programmer, and my programs have lots of users. Please make all my users satisfied with my software and let them ask for sensible changes.
At which point the genie responds, Um, let me see that map again.
I’ve always loved this one (sadly its a dilbert and they really are good at protecting their copyrighted property - technically & legally so you have to go there to see this)