Programmer excuses

  • Actually, that's a feature.
  • Did you check for a virus on your system?
  • Don't worry, that value is only wrong half of the time.
  • Even though it doesn't work, how does it feel?
  • Everything looks fine my end.
  • How is that possible?
  • I broke that deliberately to do some testing.
  • I can have a look but there's a lot of if statements in that code!
  • I can't make that a priority right now.
  • I can't test everything.
  • I couldn't find any examples of how that can be done anywhere else in the project.
  • I couldn't find any examples of how that can be done anywhere online.
  • I couldn't find any library that can even do that.
  • I did a quick fix last time, but it broke when we rebooted.
  • I didn't anticipate that I would make any errors.
  • I didn't create that part of the program.
  • I didn't receive a ticket for it.
  • I forgot to commit the code that fixes that.
  • I had to do the project backwards as people demanded results out of order.
  • I have never seen that before in my life.
  • I have too many other high priority things to do right now.
  • I haven't been able to reproduce that.
  • I haven't had any experience with that before.
  • I haven't had the chance to run that code yet.
  • I haven't touched that code in weeks.
  • I heard there was a solar flare today.
  • I must have been stress testing our production server.
  • I must not have understood what you were asking for.
  • I thought I finished that.
  • I thought I fixed that.
  • I thought he knew the context of what I was talking about.
  • I thought you signed off on that?
  • I told you yesterday it would be done by the end of today.
  • I usually get a notification when that happens.
  • I was just fixing that.
  • I was told to stop working on that when something important came up.
  • I'll have to fix that at a later date.
  • I'm not familiar with it so I didn't fix it in case I made it worse.
  • I'm not getting any error codes.
  • I'm not sure as I've never had a look at how that works before.
  • I'm still working on that as we speak.
  • I'm surprised it works as well as it does.
  • I'm surprised that was working at all.
  • In the interest of efficiency I only check my email for that on a Friday.
  • It can't be broken, it passes all unit tests.
  • It must be a firewall issue.
  • It must be a hardware problem.
  • It must be because of a leap second.
  • It must be because of a leap year.
  • It probably won't happen again.
  • It was working in my head.
  • It worked yesterday.
  • It works for me.
  • It works, but it's not been tested.
  • It would have taken twice as long to build it properly.
  • It would take too long to rewrite the code from scratch.
  • It's a browser compatibility issue.
  • It's a character encoding issue.
  • It's a known bug with the programming language.
  • It's a known bug with the server software.
  • It's a remote vendor issue.
  • It's a third party application issue.
  • It's always been like that.
  • It's an unexpected emergent behaviour of several last minute abstractions.
  • It's just some unlucky coincidence.
  • It's never done that before.
  • It's never shown unexpected behaviour like this before.
  • It's not a code problem - our users need more training.
  • Management insisted we wouldn't need to waste our time writing unit tests.
  • Maybe somebody forgot to pay our hosting company.
  • My time was split in a way that meant I couldn't do either project properly.
  • No one told me so I was forced to assume which way to do that.
  • Nobody asked me how long it would actually take.
  • Nobody has ever complained about it.
  • Oh, that was just a temporary fix.
  • Oh, that was only supposed to be a placeholder.
  • Oh, you said you DIDN'T want that to happen?
  • Our code quality is no worse than anyone else in the industry.
  • Our hardware is too slow to cope with demand.
  • Our internet connection must not be working.
  • Our redundant systems must have failed as well.
  • Somebody must have changed my code.
  • THIS can't be the source of THAT.
  • That behaviour is in the original specification.
  • That code seemed so simple I didn't think it needed testing.
  • That code was written by the last guy.
  • That error means it was successful.
  • That feature was slated for phase two.
  • That feature would be outside of the scope.
  • That important email must have been marked as spam.
  • That isn't covered by my job description.
  • That process requires human oversight that nobody was providing.
  • That was literally a one in a million error.
  • That wasn't in the original specification.
  • That worked perfectly when I developed it.
  • That wouldn't be economically feasible.
  • That's already fixed it just hasn't taken effect yet.
  • That's interesting, how did you manage to make it do that?
  • That's not a bug, it's a configuration issue.
  • That's the fault of the graphic designer.
  • The WYSIWYG must have produced an invalid output.
  • The accounting department must have cancelled that subscription.
  • The client must have been hacked.
  • The client wanted it changed at the last minute.
  • The code is compiling.
  • The download must have been corrupted.
  • The existing design makes it difficult to do the right thing.
  • The marketing department made us put that there.
  • The original specification contained conflicting requirements.
  • The person responsible doesn't work here anymore.
  • The problem seems to be with our legacy software.
  • The program has never collected that information.
  • The project manager said no one would want that feature.
  • The project manager told me to do it that way.
  • The request must have dropped some packets.
  • The specifications were ambiguous.
  • The third party API is not responding.
  • The third party documentation doesn't exist.
  • The third party documentation is wrong.
  • The unit test doesn't cover that eventuality.
  • The user must not know how to use it.
  • There must be something strange in your data.
  • There was too little data to bother with the extra functionality at the time.
  • There were too many developers working on that same thing.
  • There's currently a problem with our hosting company.
  • This code was not supposed to go in to production yet.
  • This is a previously known bug you told me not to work on yet.
  • We didn't have enough time to peer review the final changes.
  • We outsourced that months ago.
  • We should have updated our software years ago.
  • We spent three months debugging it because we only had one month to build it.
  • Well at least we know not to try that again.
  • Well done, you found my easter egg!
  • Well, at least it displays a very pretty error.
  • Well, that's a first.
  • What did I tell you about using parts of the system you don't understand?
  • What did you type in wrong to get it to crash?
  • Where were you when the program blew up?
  • Why do you want to do it that way?
  • You can't use that version on your system.
  • You must be missing some of the dependencies.
  • You must have done something wrong.
  • You must have the wrong version.
  • You're doing it wrong.
  • Your browser must be caching the old content.