Fred Brooks Quotes - Page 2

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• Adjusting to the requirement for perfection is, I think, the most difficult part of learning to program.

  Fred Brooks

  Thinking, Perfection, Requirements

  "The Mythical Man-Month". Book by Fred Brooks, 1975.

  7 Copy quote

• Improving your process won't move you from good to great design. It'll move you from bad to average.

  Fred Brooks

  Moving, Average, Design

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• Scientists build to learn; Engineers learn to build.

  Fred Brooks

  Learning, Scientist, Programming

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• The magic of myth and legend has come true in our time. One types the correct incantation on a keyboard, and a display screen comes to life, showing things that never were nor could be.... The computer resembles the magic of legend in this respect, too. If one character, one pause, of the incantation is not strictly in proper form, the magic doesn't work. Human beings are not accustomed to being perfect, and few areas of human activity demand it. Adjusting to the requirement for perfection is, I think, the most difficult part of learning to program.

  Fred Brooks

  Character, Thinking, Perfect

  "The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering". Book by Frederick Brooks, 1975.

  9 Copy quote

• Systems program building is an entropy-decreasing process, hence inherently metastable. Program maintenance is an entropy-increasing process, and even its most skillful execution only delays the subsidence of the system into unfixable obsolescence.

  Fred Brooks

  Maintenance, Delay, Execution

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• When a task cannot be partitioned because of sequential constraints, the application of more effort has no effect on the schedule. The bearing of a child takes nine months, no matter how many women are assigned.

  Fred Brooks

  Children, Effort, Tasks

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• The essence of a software entity is a construct of interlocking concepts. I believe the hard part of building software to be the specification, design, and testing of this conceptual construct, not the labor of representing it and testing the fidelity of the representation.

  Fred Brooks

  Believe, Essence, Design

  "No Silver Bullet – Essence and Accident in Software Engineering". Paper by Fred Brooks, 1986.

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• Dissertations are not finished; they are abandoned.

  Fred Brooks

  Abandoned, Dissertation, Finished

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• Predictability and great design are not friends.

  Fred Brooks

  Design, Not Friends, Great Design

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• All programmers are optimists. Perhaps this modern sorcery especially attracts those who believe in happy endings and fairy godmothers. Perhaps the hundreds of nitty frustrations drive away all but those who habitually focus on the end goal. Perhaps it is merely that computers are young, programmers are younger, and the young are always optimists.

  Fred Brooks

  Believe, Frustration, Goal

  12 Copy quote

• Men and months are interchangeable commodities only when a task can be partitioned among many workers with no communication among them.

  Fred Brooks

  Communication, Men, Tasks

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• Study after study shows that the very best designers produce structures that are faster, smaller, simpler, clearer, and produced with less effort. The differences between the great and the average approach an order of magnitude.

  Fred Brooks

  Average, Order, Differences

  "No Silver Bullet". Book by Fred Brooks, 1986.

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• The complexity of software is an essential property, not an accidental one. Hence, descriptions of a software entity that abstract away its complexity often abstracts away its essence.

  Fred Brooks

  Essence, Essentials, Abstract

  "No Silver Bullet". Book by Fred Brooks, 1986.

  8 Copy quote

• It is very difficult to make a vigorous, plausible, and job-risking defense of an estimate that is derived by no quantitative method, supported by little data, and certified chiefly by the hunches of the managers

  Fred Brooks

  Jobs, Data, Defense

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• Mediocre design provably wastes the world's resources, corrupts the environment, affects international competitiveness. Design is important.

  Fred Brooks

  Design, Important, World

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• The critical thing about the design process is to identify your scarcest resource. Despite what you may think, that very often is not money. For example, in a NASA moon shot, money is abundant but lightness is scarce; every ounce of weight requires tons of material below. On the design of a beach vacation home, the limitation may be your ocean-front footage. You have to make sure your whole team understands what scarce resource you're optimizing.

  Fred Brooks

  Beach, Team, Ocean

  "Master Planner: Fred Brooks Shows How to Design Anything". Interview with Kevin Kelly, www.wired.com. July 28, 2010.

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• Originality is no excuse for ignorance.

  Fred Brooks

  Ignorance, Originality, No Excuses

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• Consensus processes starve innovative design by eating the resource.

  Fred Brooks

  Design, Eating, Process

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• The management question, therefore, is not whether to build a pilot system and throw it away. You will do that. Hence plan to throw one away; you will, anyhow.

  Fred Brooks

  Pilots, Management, Plans

  "The Mythical Man-Month". Book by Fred Brooks, 1975.

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• System debugging has always been a graveyard-shift occupation, like astronomy.

  Fred Brooks

  Debugging, Occupation, Astronomy

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• The first step toward the management of disease was replacement of demon theories and humours theories by the germ theory. That very step, the beginning of hope, in itself dashed all hopes of magical solutions. It told workers that progress would be made stepwise, at great effort, and that a persistent, unremitting care would have to be paid to a discipline of cleanliness. So it is with software engineering today.

  Fred Brooks

  Engineering, Discipline, Effort

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• A design style is defined by a set of microdecisions. A clear style reflects a consistent set. A clear style may not be a good style; a muddled one never is.

  Fred Brooks

  Design, Style, May

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• More software projects have gone awry for lack of calendar time than for all other causes combined.

  Fred Brooks

  Time, Gone, Calendars

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• Systematically identity top designers as early as possible. The best are often not the most experienced.

  Fred Brooks

  Identity, Designer

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• The programmer's primary weapon in the never-ending battle against slow system is to change the intramodular structure. Our first response should be to reorganize the modules' data structures.

  Fred Brooks

  Data, Battle, Weapons

  "Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction". Book by Steve C. McConnell, 1993.

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