Engineering Jokes

[digimushu]

An Embedded engineer's view of how the Universe was created:

In the beginning, God created the bit. And the bit was a zero. On the first day, he toggled the 0 to 1, and the Universe was. (In those days, bootstrap loaders were simple, and "active low" signals didn't yet exist.) On the second day, God's boss wanted a demo, and tried to read the bit. This being volatile memory, the bit reverted to a 0. And the universe wasn't. God learned the importance of backups and memory refresh, and spent the rest of the day (and his first all-nighter) reinstalling the universe. On the third day, the bit cried "Oh, Lord! If you exist, give me a sign!" And God created rev 2.0 of the bit, even better than the original prototype. Those in Universe Marketing immediately realized that "new and improved" wouldn't do justice to such a grand and glorious creation. And so it was dubbed the Most Significant Bit. Many bits followed, but only one was so honored.

On the fourth day, God created a simple ALU with 'add' and 'logical shift' instructions. And the original bit discovered that -- by performing a single shift instruction -- it could become the Most Significant Bit. And God realized the importance of computer security.

On the fifth day, God created the first mid-life kicker, rev 2.0 of the ALU, with wonderful features, and said "Forget that add and shift stuff. Go forth and multiply." And God saw that it was good.

On the sixth day, God got a bit overconfident, and invented pipelines, register hazards, optimizing compilers, crosstalk, restartable instructions, micro interrupts, race conditions,
and propagation delays. Historians have used this to convincingly argue that the sixth day must have been a Monday.

On the seventh day, an engineering change introduced Windows into the Universe, and it hasn't worked right since.

-Feel free to add more jokes!

[digimushu]

A tourist walked into a pet shop and was looking at
the animals on display. While he was there, another
customer walked in and said to the shop keeper,
"I'll have a C monkey please".

The shopkeeper nodded, went over to a cage at the side
of the shop and took out a monkey. He fit a collar and
leash, handed it to the customer, saying, "That'll be
$5000." The customer paid and walked out with his
monkey.

Startled, the tourist went over to the shopkeeper and
said, "That was a very expensive monkey. Most of them
are only a few hundred dollars. Why did it cost so
much?"

The shopkeeper answered, "Ah, that monkey can program
in C - very fast, tight code, no bugs, well worth the
money."

The tourist looked at the monkey in another cage.
"That one's even more expensive - $10,000! What does
it do?"

"Oh, that one's a C++ monkey; it can manage
object-oriented programming, Visual C++, even some
Java. All the really useful stuff," said the
shopkeeper.

The tourist looked around for a little longer and saw
a third monkey in a cage of its own. The price tag
around its neck read $50,000. He gasped to the
shopkeeper, "That one costs more than all the others
put together! What on earth does it do?"

The shopkeeper replied, "Well, I haven't actually seen
it do anything, but it says it's a consultant."

[digimushu]

Write in C (Sing to the Beatle's tune "Let it Be")

When I find my code in tons of trouble,
Friends and colleagues come to me,
Speaking words of wisdom:
"Write in C."

As the deadline fast approaches,
And bugs are all that I can see,
Somewhere, someone whispers:
"Write in C."

Write in C, Write in C,
Write in C, oh, Write in C.
LOGO's dead and buried,
Write in C.

I used to write a lot of FORTRAN,
For science it worked flawlessly.
Try using it for graphics!
Write in C.

If you've just spent nearly 30 hours,
Debugging some assembly,
Soon you will be glad to
Write in C.

Write in C, Write in C,
Write in C, yeah, Write in C.
BASIC's not the answer.
Write in C.

Write in C, Write in C
Write in C, oh, Write in C.
Pascal won't quite cut it.
Write in C.

[digimushu]

To the optimist, the glass is half full.
To the pessimist, the glass is half empty.
To the engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

So, if you let the engineer at it (fix the glass), the optimist, while
pretty happy, becomes happier and the pessimist becomes ecstatic.

[digimushu]

This is a bunch of proverbs i found on the Embedded Muse...Enjoy!

Those who have done lots of programming will find it funnier...

Enjoy!

Programming Proverbs
A clever person solves a problem.
A wise person avoids it.
- Einstein

No matter what the problem is,
it's always a people problem.
- Jerry Weinberg

If the code and the comments disagree, both are probably wrong.
Good judgment comes from experience... and experience comes from bad judgment.
- Fred Brooks

Choose two:
Good
Fast
Cheap

Furious activity is no substitute for understanding.

To go faster, slow down. Everybody who knows about orbital mechanics understands
that.
- Scott Cherf

Discipline is the best tool.
Design first, then code.
Don't patch bugs out, rewrite them out.
Don't test bugs out, design them out.

If you've found 3 bugs in a program, best estimate is that there are 3 more.

For every 7 faults corrected, one of at least equal severity injected.
- N.E. Adams

60% of product cost comes after initial shipment.

If you can?t write it down in English, you can't program it.

If something is worth doing once, it's worth building a tool to do it.

Abraham Lincoln reportedly said that, given eight hours to chop down a tree, he'd spend
six sharpening his axe.
- TidBITS 654, quoted by Derek K. Miller, via Art Evans

Your problem is another's solution;
Your solution will be his problem.
The significant problems we face cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that
created them.
- Albert Einstein

Or, as Brian Kernighan put it:
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.

do it
do it right
do it right now
- Bobby Riggs

It is not enough to do your best: you must know what to do, and THEN do your best.
- W. Edwards Deming

One test is worth a thousand opinions.

I am a design chauvinist. I believe that good design is magical and not to be lightly tinkered with. The difference between a great design and a lousy one is in the meshing of the thousand details that either fit or don't, and the spirit of the passionate intellect that
has tied them together, or tried. That's why programming - or buying software - on the basis of "lists of features" is a doomed and misguided effort. The features can be thrown together, as in a garbage can, or carefully laid together and interwoven in elegant
unification, as in APL, or the Forth language, or the game of chess.
- Ted Nelson

Software is too important to be left to programmers.
- Meilir Page-Jones.

If you think good architecture is expensive, try bad architecture
- Brian Foote and Joseph Yoder

While we all know that unmastered complexity is at the root of the misery, we do not know what degree of simplicity can be obtained, nor to what extent the intrinsic complexity of the whole design has to show up in the interfaces. We simply do not know yet the limits of disentanglement. We do not know yet whether intrinsic intricacy can be distinguished from accidental intricacy.
- E. W. Dijkstra

A leader is best when people barely know that he exists.
Less good when they obey and acclaim him.
Worse when they fear and despise him.
Fail to honor people, and they fail to honor you.
But of a good leader, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled,
they will say, "We did this ourselves."
- Lao-Tzu

In ancient China there was a family of healers, one of whom was known throughout the land and employed as a physician to a great lord. The physician was asked which of his family was the most skillful healer. He replied, "I tend to the sick and dying with drastic and dramatic treatments, and on occasion someone is cured and my name gets out among the lords."
"My elder brother cures sickness when it just begins to take root, and his skills are known among the local peasants and neighbors."
"My eldest brother is able to sense the spirit of sickness and eradicate it before it takes form. His name is unknown outside our home."

And I guess that?s the deal with software ? really great programmers work in relative obscurity, their code silently running week after week, with never a fuss nor a crash. In contrast, the heroes are often those who rush madly in, toss in poorly thought-out patches and get the system running again, for a while.

[topdog]

Choose two:
Good
Fast
Cheap


heh. very true!

[__earth]

do it
do it right
do it right now
- Bobby Riggs

aww, this hurts

[digimushu]

In honor of Valentine's Day, Scott Fahringer wrote a poem for his engineer wife...

How do I love thee,
More ways than I can calculate.

When I first gazed upon you from across the room,
You caused my registers to overflow.

But now when I look into your eyes,
my routines become defect-free,
and my exception handler never activates.

This evening with you is a CMM level 5 experience,
and I desire to hold you in my peripherals.

My program execution for you will continue forever.

The ring you wear is on my symbol table,
for all external references are resolved and
fade away when I'm linked with you.

I look forward to making an enhanced
category 5 connection with you tonight,
for we truly complement each other.

Yes, when we Google tonight - Yahoo!!

[masterof_none]

A joke that's not quite funny. :

(It was raining outside. Heavily).

(A just came in, with his wet shirt on).
B : hey A, is it raining outside?.
(B was asking even though he knew that it was raining. He can look through the window).

A : No , it wasn't.

B : Ok, fortunately I have my NAND gate to invert your statement.

A: Ok.

[luke]

I found this while chatting in IRC:

<shrott> hey neone out there plz try this out
<kira-kun> listening
<shrott> r u using winxp?
<kira-kun> winxp home here
<shrott> go to start>run
<shrott> then type "shutdown -t 01"
<shrott> leave out the quote marks
<markZ> ...
<kira-kun> hold on
* kira-kun (~ryoohkix1@<hidden>) Quit
<shrott> gottcha
<markZ> lol
anyone wants to try it out? "shutdown -t 01" :P

[masterof_none]

anyone wants to try it out? "shutdown -t 01" :P

I would guess shutdown -t 01, -t stands for time, and 01 stands for either 1 minute or 1 second.

I use it a lot to shutdown linux, and all unix system got shutdown this way:
[shutdown -[option] time]

so, to halt, just run

shutdown -h now

it would turn off the power. to Reboot, run ,

shutdown -r now

or shutdown -r [time], to specified when to reboot.

also, there's a shortcut to reboot : the command is,
reboot

[gonjeng]

hahaha... poor 'kira-kun'...

[littlebigone]

i don't know if this constitutes an engineering joke.

chown -R us ../base

i think i got it right.

[digimushu]

A major research institution (MRI) has recently announced the discovery of the heaviest chemical element yet known to science. The new element has been tentatively named Governmentium.



Governmentium has 1 neutron, 12 assistant neutrons, 75 deputy neutrons, and 224 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 312.



These 312 particles are held together by forces called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called peons. Since governmentium has no electrons, it is inert. However, it can be detected as it impedes every reaction with which it comes into contact. A minute amount of governmentium causes one reaction to take over four days to complete when it would normally take less than a second.



Governmentium has a normal half-life of three years; it does not decay, but instead undergoes a reorganization in which a portion of the assistant neutrons and deputy neutrons exchange places. In fact, governmentium's mass will actually increase over time, since each reorganization will cause some morons to become neutrons, forming isodopes.

This characteristic of moron-promotion leads some scientists to speculate that governmentium is formed whenever morons reach a certain quantity in concentration. This hypothetical quantity is referred to as Critical Morass

[luke]

A major research institution (MRI) has recently announced the discovery of the heaviest chemical element yet known to science. The new element has been tentatively named Governmentium.
That joke had me laughing hard ... :lol:

I bet the scientists who discovered that element are among those who called themselves "political scientists" :P

[digimushu]

The Recommended Practices Committee of the International Society of Philosophical Engineers' Universal Law for Naive Engineers

Law #1: In any calculation, any error which can creep in will do so.

Law #2: Any error in any calculation will be in the direction of most harm.

Law #3: In any formula, constants (especially those obtained from engineering handbooks) are to be treated as variables.

Law #4: The best approximation of service conditions in the laboratory will not begin to meet those conditions encountered in actual service.

Law #5: The most vital dimension on any plan drawing stands the most chance of being omitted.

Law #6: If only one bid can be secured on any project, the price will be unreasonable.

Law #7: If a test installation functions perfectly, all subsequent production units will malfunction.

Law #8: All delivery promises must be multiplied by a factor of 2.0.

Law #9: Major changes in construction will always be requested after fabrication is nearly complete.

Law #10: Parts that positively cannot be assembled in improper order will be.

Law #11: Interchangeable parts won't.

Law #12: Manufacturer's specifications of performance should be multiplied by a factor of 0.5.

Law #13: Salespeople's claims for performance should be multiplied by a factor of 0.25.

Law #14: Installation and Operating Instructions shipped with the device will be promptly discarded by the Receiving Department.

Law #15: Any device requiring service or adjustment will be the least accessible.

Law #16: Service conditions as given on specifications will be exceeded.

Law #17: If more than one person is responsible for a miscalculation, no one will be at fault.

Law #18: Identical units which test in an identical fashion will not behave in an identical fashion in the field.

Law #19: If, in engineering practice, a safety factor is sent through the service experience at an ultimate value, an ingenious idiot will promptly calculate a method to exceed said safety factor.

Law #20: Warranty and guarantee clauses are voided by payment of the invoice.

Law #21: The rule for engineers: "Change the data to fit the curve."

[profmich]

I guess many would have heard of the binary joke before...


There are 10 types of people in the world. Those who can read binary and those who don't.

[digimushu]

Christmas card for Engineers...

Enjoy!

http://www.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Personal/L.Wood/received/engineer-christmas-plans/engineer-xmas-tree.pdf

You will need adobe pdf viewer.