HN Explorer

Ask HN: What are your favorite parables, anecdotes, idioms, etc.?

26 points by squircle ↗ HN
You can lead a horse to water... and what have you. Don't be shy about malapropisms either.

72 comments

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montgomery_r
The more I hear about inverse proportionality, the less I like it.
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AndrewOMartin
This reminds me of something I like to say, "It's probably just confirmation bias, it's almost always confirmation bias".
hackeraccount
In theory practice is just like theory but in practice it's not like it at all.
smitty1e
I like: "The difference between theory and practice is greater in practice than in theory."
bravetraveler
If you don't have time to do it right, you must have time to do it again
solardev
In my field (web dev), it's more like "if you don't have time to do it right, just leave after your promotion and let the next guy deal with it"
bravetraveler
Same in my field (SRE/Architecture)! I know the struggle, friend :(

It's tough. The internet has taught people the value in branding/advertising. I'm too exhausted from doing the work they skipped.

1024core
"Some people, when faced with a problem, think: I know, I'll use a regular expression.

Now they have 2 problems."

Nicholas_C
Victory has a thousand fathers but defeat is an orphan
nine_k
No mutiny has ever succeeded; if it had, it would be called a revolution (paraphrasing).
suranyami
Mexican proverb: Every revolution eventually becomes another government.
randycupertino
"That dog just 'aint gonna hunt."

One of my UK vendors recently said, "this went off like a damp squib" for something that didn't go over well. Basically means a firework that didn't light because it was wet.

suranyami
A squib is what they use in movies to make something look like it’s been shot with a bullet. Kinda a little flat firework that ejects “stuff” explosively. Actors wear them under their costumes. They’re usually remote controlled
smegsicle
more generally, a squib is a low-power explosive
explaingarlic
"Prostate with grief"

Many great sopranos quotes to go along, such as..

"Much like a child, a film has many parents".

skilled
You are what you are in this world.
ion9
Two of my favorites:

1. We will burn that bridge when we get to it.

2. You cannot make a computer run faster but you can make it do less.

xnx
"We build our computers the way we build our cities--over time, without a plan, on top of ruins." https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ellen_Ullman
nine_k
Isn't this applicable to any complex enough systems?
xnx
Possibly, but software development seems particularly susceptible to the illusion of the ease of "rewriting from scratch" in ways that physical endeavors are not.
suranyami
If brute force doesn’t work, you’re not using enough of it.

There are only 2 hard problems in computer science:

1. Naming things 2. Cache invalidation 3. Off-by-one errors 0. Asynchronous callbacks 7. Buffer overflowA203FE11980018900000

nine_k
"There are two hard problems in computer science: (1) We have only one joke, and (2) it's not even very funny."
suranyami
Ah, but it’s an idempotent joke, so it’s funny no matter how many times you tell it!
montgomery_r
Every tome I try to learn what idempotent means, it’s as though I’m starting from scratch.
nine_k
«Hofstadter's law states that a project always takes longer than expected, even when the law is taken into account.»

(Jokes about recursion are always funny, take, for instance, this one.)

nine_k
"Don't try to think outside the box. There is no box."
greentext
Wait, now there's two boxes.
nine_k
"Soap box, ballot box, ammo box. Use in that order."
audiodude
Make the easy, easy and the hard, possible.
more_corn
And at Google we made impossible things possible, but at the cost of making easy things hard.
erik_seaberg
Every service is either deprecated or not ready yet.
jand
"Was Hans nicht lernt, lernt Hänschen nimmermehr."

german, roughly - "What Hans did not learn, his son will never learn."

It is so obviously wrong as a generalized truth but painfully accurate on occasion. Cool about it: The reaction of others towards this saying is a great signal on their views regarding life, society and education.

audiodude
Code is written once but read a thousand times.
jtthe13
The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.

William Arthur Ward

xnx
“There are only two kinds of languages: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody uses.” ― Bjarne Stroustrup
suranyami
My body is a temple: old, crumbing and full of unspeakable horrors.
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mannyv
You can't put 9 women in a room and get a baby in a month. - project manager adage.
nine_k
"I bought for my manager two copies of Mythical Man-Month so that he could read it faster."
readthenotes1
Childhood ends when you realize you're not the most important person in the room.

Adolescense ends when you realize that just because you can does not mean you should.

One form of evil is trying to make others suffer because you are.

Parenting is love and consequences

DonsDiscountGas
The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The second best time is now.

Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly. (A less obvious but more memorable way of saying don't let perfect be the enemy of good)

erik_seaberg
"Do we really need to test all our code?"

"No, of course not! Only test the code that's supposed to work."

erik_seaberg
"Now, this is only temporary ... unless it works."
vikaveri
Few things are as permanent as a temporary fix that works