Software Quotes - Page 2

• 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.

  Brian Kernighan

  Inspirational, Funny, Smart

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• The cheapest, fastest, and most reliable components are those that aren't there.

  Gordon Bell

  Engineering, Programming, Simplicity In Design

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• One of my most productive days was throwing away 1,000 lines of code.

  Ken Thompson

  Great Day, Lines, Computer

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• When I'm working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only how to solve the problem.

  R. Buckminster Fuller

  Beauty, Creativity, Thinking

  "The Universal Book of Mathematics". Book by David Darling, p. 34, November 8, 2004.

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• The price of reliability is the pursuit of the utmost simplicity. It is a price which the very rich may find hard to pay.

  Tony Hoare

  Simplicity, Reliability, May

  "The Emperor's Old Clothes". Tony Hoare's lecture at the 1980 ACM Turing Award in Nashville, Tennessee; "Communications of the ACM", Volume 24, Issue 2, dl.acm.org. February 1981.

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• There are two ways to write error-free programs; only the third one works.

  Alan Perlis

  Writing, Errors, Two

  "Epigrams on Programming". ACM "SIGPLAN" Notices 17 (9), (pp. 7-13), September 1982.

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• There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult.

  Tony Hoare

  Witty, Humorous, Simple

  "The Emperor's Old Clothes". Communications of the ACM 24 (2), (pp. 75-83), February 1981.

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• Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.

  Rick Cook

  Winning, Technology, Race

  "The Wizardry Compiled". Book by Rick Cook, 1989.

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• Increasingly, people seem to misinterpret complexity as sophistication, which is baffling -- the incomprehensible should cause suspicion rather than admiration.

  Niklaus Wirth

  People, Causes, Admiration

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• Most software today is very much like an Egyptian pyramid with millions of bricks piled on top of each other, with no structural integrity, but just done by brute force and thousands of slaves.

  Alan Kay

  Funny Inspirational, Integrity, Technology

  "A Conversation with Alan Kay: Big talk with the creator of Smalltalk — and much more". Interview with Stuart Feldman in ACM Queue, Volume 2, issue 9, queue.acm.org. December 27, 2004.

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• Software is like sex: It's better when it's free.

  Linus Torvalds

  Sex, Technology, Linux

  Attributed to Torvalds at 1996 FSF conference,

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• Premature optimization is the root of all evil in programming.

  Tony Hoare

  Roots, Evil, Simplicity

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• The most important single aspect of software development is to be clear about what you are trying to build.

  Bjarne Stroustrup

  Learning, Simplicity, Important

  Bjarne Stroustrup (2000). “The C++ Programming Language”, Addison-Wesley Professional

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• Software is like entropy. It is difficult to grasp, weighs nothing, and obeys the second law of thermodynamics; i.e. it always increases.

  Norman Ralph Augustine

  Science, Law, Literature

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• Most of the good programmers do programming not because they expect to get paid or get adulation by the public, but because it is fun to program.

  Linus Torvalds

  Fun, Work, Program

  "First Monday Interview with Linus Torvalds: What motivates free software developers?". Interview with Rishab Aiyer Ghosh, firstmonday.org. March 2, 1998.

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• Software is a great combination between artistry and engineering. When you finally get done and get to appreciate what you have done it is like a part of yourself that you've put together. I think a lot of the people here feel that way.

  Bill Gates

  Thinking, Engineering, People

  "MS-DOS Turns 30: PCMag's Original Interview With Bill Gates". Interview with David Bunnel, in.pcmag.com. February 1, 1982.

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• Software Engineering is that part of Computer Science which is too difficult for the Computer Scientist.

  Friedrich L. Bauer

  Engineering, Computer, Scientist

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• That's the thing about people who think they hate computers. What they really hate is lousy programmers.

  Larry Niven

  Hate, Technology, Thinking

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• People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware.

  Alan Kay

  Technology, People, Serious

  Creative Think talk, www.folklore.org. July 20, 1982.

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• Learning research tells us that the time lag from experiment to feedback is critical.

  Kent Beck

  Design, Research, Lag

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• Good engineering is characterized by gradual, stepwise refinement of products that yields increased performance under given constraints and with given resources.

  Niklaus Wirth

  Yield, Engineering, Resources

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• High-quality software is not expensive. High-quality software is faster and cheaper to build and maintain than low-quality software, from initial development all the way through total cost of ownership.

  Capers Jones

  Quality, Cost, Development

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• A lot of jobs today are being automated; what happens when you extend that concept to very important areas of society like law enforcement? What happens if you start controlling the behavior of criminals or people in general with software-running machines? Those questions, they look like they're sci-fi but they're not.

  Jose Padilha

  Running, Jobs, Law

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• Controlling complexity is the essence of computer programming.

  Brian Kernighan

  Technology, Essence, Simplicity

  Brian W. Kernighan (1981). “Software Tools in Pascal”, Addison-Wesley Professional

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• Computers themselves, and software yet to be developed, will revolutionize the way we learn.

  Steve Jobs

  Way, Computer

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