Software Design Quotes - Page 2

• If the automobile had followed the same development as the computer, a Rolls Royce would today cost $100 and get a million miles per gallon, and explode once a year killing everyone inside.

  Robert X. Cringely

  Funny, Humor, Technology

  "Noted from the field". "InfoWorld Magazine", Volume 11, Number 10, March 6, 1989.

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• If we want users to like our software we should design it to behave like a likeable person: respectful, generous and helpful.

  Alan Cooper

  Design, Want, Helpful

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• Technical skill is mastery of complexity, while creativity is mastery of simplicity.

  Christopher Zeeman

  Truth, Creativity, Knowledge

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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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• The cost of adding a feature isn't just the time it takes to code it. The cost also includes the addition of an obstacle to future expansion. ... The trick is to pick the features that don't fight each other.

  John Carmack

  Fighting, Simplicity, Expansion

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• If the designers of X Windows built cars, there would be no fewer than five steering wheels hidden about the cockpit, none of which followed the same principles – but you’d be able to shift gears with your car stereo. Useful feature that.

  Marcus J. Ranum

  Car, Able, Wheels

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• Most of you are familiar with the virtues of a programmer. There are three, of course: laziness, impatience, and hubris.

  Larry Wall

  Funny, Technology, Three

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• Should array indices start at 0 or 1? My compromise of 0.5 was rejected without, I thought, proper consideration.

  Stan Kelly-Bootle

  Funny Inspirational, Technology, Compromise

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• Design is in everything we make, but it's also between those things. It's a mix of craft, science, storytelling, propaganda, and philosophy.

  Erik Adigard

  Philosophy, Design, Crafts

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• A language that doesn't have everything is actually easier to program in than some that do

  Dennis Ritchie

  Simplicity, Language, Computer

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• Know what you're talking about.

  George H. W. Bush

  Knowing Jesus, Talking, Scary

  George H.W. Bush (2013). “All the Best, George Bush: My Life in Letters and Other Writings”, p.99, Simon and Schuster

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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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• When we use a language, we should commit ourselves to knowing it, being able to read it, and writing it idiomatically.

  Ron Jeffries

  Writing, Knowing, Design

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• I think psychoanalyze-pinhead is the important lesson of GNU Emacs.

  Todd Bennett

  Thinking, Design, Important

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• The real tight interface is between the book and the reader-the world of the book is plugged right into your brain, never mind the [virtual reality] bodysuit.

  Bill McKibben

  Real, Book, Design

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• To a database person, every nail looks like a thumb. Or something like that.

  Jamie Zawinski

  Design, Nails, Looks

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• Please don't fall into the trap of believing that I am terribly dogmatical about the go to statement. I have the uncomfortable feeling that others are making a religion out of it, as if the conceptual problems of programming could be solved by a single trick, by a simple form of coding discipline!

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Believe, Fall, Simple

  "Structured Programming with go to Statements". Donald E. Knuth, "ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR)", Volume 6, Issue 4, December 1974.

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• Inspiration comes from the act of writing.

  Steve Doll

  Inspiration, Writing, Design

  "I find inspiration through writing". www.swissinfo.ch. July 6, 2008.

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• One of the great skills in using any language is knowing what not to use, what not to say. There's that simplicity thing again.

  Ron Jeffries

  Skills, Knowing, Simplicity

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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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• Simplicity and elegance are unpopular because they require hard work and discipline to achieve and education to be appreciated.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Hard Work, Discipline, Simplicity

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• We don't think of ourselves as being perfectionists, really. To us it's more about desperately trying to have it sound more or less OK.

  Donald Fagen

  Thinking, Design, Trying

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• ... as a slow-witted human being I have a very small head and I had better learn to live with it and to respect my limitations and give them full credit, rather than to try to ignore them, for the latter vain effort will be punished by failure.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Giving, Design, Effort

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• The designer of a new kind of system must participate fully in the implementation.

  Donald Knuth

  Design, Kind, Software

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• It's hard to read through a book on the principles of magic without glancing at the cover periodically to make sure it isn't a book on software design.

  Bruce Tognazzini

  Book, Simplicity, Design

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