Top 10 Movie quotes for Developers.

This article is inspired by Dustin's blog published in Java World. Top 10 movie quotes go like...

10."I had to keep digging ... without a shovel."

This quote comes from the 1985 movie Fletch. It sometimes feels like we in the software development find ourselves in situations in which we are tying to identify and resolve a bug without the appropriate tools.

9. "A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it."

       This quote is tken from movie Men in Black.When Jay is asking Kay why the secret Men in Black don't tell the ordinary people of Earth about the aliens living among them. This quote is Kay's explanation and it often applies in software development as well. 
It is easy in our rush to stay current and relevant to make poor choices that we would not do individually when given the opportunity to think rationally about the situation. The rush to apply EJB 1.x/2.x where it wasn't needed is one example of this.

8. "If you're good at something never do it for free."

      This statement is from Heath Ledger's The Joker in 2008's The Dark Knight can often apply to the best software developers. 

7. "The code is more what you'd call 'guidelines' than actual rules."

       These words by Captain Hector Barbossa to Elizabeth Swann in classic movie Pirates of the   Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl refer to the pirate's code, but sometimes developers might be attempted to see requirements as guidelines rather than requirements. This is generally not a good idea, however, assuming that requirements have been accurately collected from customer input. Meeting the requirements generally means making the client happy.

6. "Houston, we have a problem."

       This is a momentous quote in a terrific movie (Apollo 13) based on real events. It is now used all the time to indicate a (usually) less serious problem than when it was originally used. Software developers use this quote when they come JVM surprises :).

5. "You fell victim to one of the classic blunders."

       This quote is taken from the 1987 movie The Princess Bride. We are all aware of some of the classic development blunders such as copying and pasting identical code in multiple places, hard-coding values, swallowing exceptions rather than handling them, etc.

4. "I'm trying to free your mind, Neo. But I can only show you the door. You're the one that has to walk through it." 

       This quotation comes from the movie The Matrix, which is wildly popular among software developers. It is important for more experienced developers to help less experienced developers through roles as mentors. This is vitally important, but in the end it is the effort of the apprentice that matters most.

3. "Show me the money!"

       This quote from the movie Jerry Maguire is one most of us can easily relate to. With current economic times like they are, this may mean more than ever to us.

2. "What we've got here is failure to communicate."

       This quote from 1967's Cool Hand Luke summarizes one of the most common problems facing software developers. Problem with communication can come in understanding the customer requirments, developing application with the peer who 8000 miles away etc.

1. "It's not the years, honey, it's the mileage."

      This response from Indiana Jones to Marion Ravenwood in 1981's Raiders of the Lost Ark is a reminder that it is often the type of experience that we have in software development that is more important than the years of experience. For example, a software developer who works with different problems and solutions and with different approaches for seven years is very likely to have better experience than the developer who works on the same problem with the same language repeatedly for the same seven years.

Bonus: 

"Sab ganda hai par dhanda hai ye. (It's all dirty but it's all business)."

     This quote is taken from a hindi movie Company. It justifies the classic situation when we need to deploy the code without unit testing just to meet strict deadlines.