Software Design Quotes

• The hardest part of design ... is keeping features out.

  Donald A. Norman

  Design, Software, Hardest

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• Out of intense complexities, intense simplicities emerge

  Winston Churchill

  Inspirational, Simplicity, Intense

  Winston Churchill (2005). “The World Crisis, 1911-1918”, p.623, Simon and Schuster

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• Nothing in progression can rest on its original plan. We may as well think of rocking a grown man in the cradle of an infant.

  Edmund Burke

  Men, Thinking, Design

  'Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol' (1777) p. 59

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• The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.

  Geoffrey Chaucer

  Inspirational, Time, Long

  The Parliament of Fowls l. 1 (1380 - 1386)

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• There is a lot of interest in the arts, music, theatre, filmmaking, engineering, architecture and software design. I think we have now transitioned the modern-day version of the entrepreneur into the creative economy.

  John Baldacci

  Art, Thinking, Engineering

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• At first I hoped that such a technically unsound project would collapse but I soon realized it was doomed to success. Almost anything in software can be implemented, sold, and even used given enough determination. There is nothing a mere scientist can say that will stand against the flood of a hundred million dollars. But there is one quality that cannot be purchased in this way - and that is reliability. The price of reliability is the pursuit of the utmost simplicity. It is a price which the very rich find most hard to pay.

  Tony Hoare

  Determination, Learning, Code Quality

  "The Emperor's Old Clothes". Communications of the ACM 24, dl.acm.org. February 1981.

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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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• Design is where science and art break even.

  Robin Mathews

  Art, Badass, Bad Ass

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• Programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute.

  Hal Abelson

  Trust, Technology, People

  "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs" by Gerald Jay Sussman and Hal Abelson, (Preface to the first edition), 1979.

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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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• Design must reflect the practical and aesthetic in business but above all... good design must primarily serve people.

  Thomas J. Watson

  Death, Design Process, Aesthetic Beauty

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• You think you KNOW when you learn, are more sure when you can write, even more when you can teach, but certain when you can program.

  Alan Perlis

  Writing, Learning, Thinking

  "Epigrams on Programming". ACM SIGPLAN Notices 17 (9), pp. 7-13, pu.inf.uni-tuebingen.de. September 1982.

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• Beauty is more important in computing than anywhere else in technology because software is so complicated. Beauty is the ultimate defense against complexity.

  David Gelernter

  Technology, Simplicity, Important

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• Simple things should be simple and complex things should be possible.

  Alan Kay

  Simple, Simplicity, Should

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• The unavoidable price of reliability is simplicity.

  Tony Hoare

  Simplicity, Reliability, Programming

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• As a rule, software systems do not work well until they have been used, and have failed repeatedly, in real applications.

  David Parnas

  Real, Learning, Insomnia

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• Unformed people delight in the gaudy and in novelty. Cooked people delight in the ordinary.

  Erik Naggum

  People, Delight, Novelty

  "Ousterhout and Tcl lost the plot with latest paper". Usenet discussion groups, groups.google.com. September 4, 1997.

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

  Donald Knuth

  Science, Roots, Evil

  Donald Ervin Knuth (1986). “TEX: The Program”, Addison-Wesley Professional

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

  Tony Hoare

  Roots, Evil, Simplicity

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• 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 greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  Inspiring, Education, Wisdom

  "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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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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