Software Design Quotes - Page 4

• There's a saying in the software design industry: "Good. Fast. Cheap. Pick two."

  Larry Wall

  Two, Design, Software

  Source: www.linuxformat.com

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• The Very Big Stupid is a thing which breeds by eating The Future. Have you seen it? It sometimes disguises itself as a good-looking quarterly bottom line, derived by closing the R&D department.

  Frank Zappa

  Stupid, Design, Lines

  Frank Zappa, Peter Occhiogrosso (1990). “Real Frank Zappa Book”, p.240, Simon and Schuster

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• It should be noted that no ethically-trained software engineer would ever consent to write a DestroyBaghdad procedure. Basic professional ethics would instead require him to write a DestroyCity procedure, to which Baghdad could be given as a parameter.

  Nathaniel Borenstein

  Writing, Baghdad, Ethics

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• Systems programmers are the high priests of a low cult.

  Bob Barton

  Design, Lows, Priests

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• The general problem with ambitious systems is complexity. [...] it is important to emphasize the value of simplicity and elegance, for complexity has a way of compounding difficulties.

  Fernando J. Corbato

  Simplicity, Design, Important

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• Design and programming are human activities; forget that and all is lost.

  Bjarne Stroustrup

  Design, Forget, Lost

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

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• ... with proper design, the features come cheaply. This approach is arduous, but continues to succeed.

  Dennis Ritchie

  Design, Succeed, Software

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• The problem with using C++ ... is that there's already a strong tendency in the language to require you to know everything before you can do anything.

  Larry Wall

  Strong, Language, Problem

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• It is poor civic hygiene to install technologies that could someday facilitate a police state.

  Bruce Schneier

  Technology, Hygiene, Police

  Bruce Schneier (2011). “Secrets and Lies: Digital Security in a Networked World”, p.56, John Wiley & Sons

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• ...it is simplicity that is difficult to make.

  Bertolt Brecht

  Simplicity, Difficult

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• The Internet is a powerful example of free speech and the free market in action; it is curious that the Net has alarmed the lawmakers of a nation founded on those principles.

  Denise Caruso

  Powerful, Principles, Example

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• Anyone could learn Lisp in one day, except that if they already knew Fortran, it would take three days.

  Marvin Minsky

  One Day, Three, Ifs

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• A charlatan makes obscure what is clear; a thinker makes clear what is obscure.

  Hugh Kingsmill

  Learning, Libertarian, Obscure

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• A simple [writing] style is the result of very hard work.

  William Zinsser

  Hard Work, Writing, Simple

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• The tragedy of our time is that we've got it backwards, we've learned to love techniques and use people.

  Herb Kelleher

  People, Design, Tragedy

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• The future belongs to neither the conduit or content players, but those who control the filtering, searching and sense-making tools we will rely on to navigate through the expanses of cyberspace.

  Paul Saffo

  Player, Design, Tools

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• If you want a language that tries to lock up all the sharp objects and fire-making implements, use Pascal or Ada: the Nerf languages, harmless fun for children of all ages, and they won't mar the furniture.

  Scott Fahlman

  Children, Fun, Fire

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• Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty-a beauty cold and austere ... yet sublimely pure and capable of stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show.

  Bertrand Russell

  Art, Math, Perfection

  "The Study of Mathematics" (1902)

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• Microsoft unleashed something called Bob, a program that's supposed to make Windows easier to use. Until a Bob helper is born, you can look forward to reading - I swear this is true - Microsoft Bob for Dummies.

  Josh Quittner

  Reading, Design, Looks

  "Computers & Technology" by Joshua Quittner, www.sfgate.com. June 11, 1995.

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• A Wired reader told me once, Get a life, which I read from the back of a yacht in the Aegean, while eating fresh sea urchins and drinking terrific Montrachet.

  Nicholas Negroponte

  Drinking, Sea, Design

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• Some cynical people think that every activity must revolve around the mighty dollar, and that anyone saying otherwise is just attempting to delude the public. I will probably never be able to convice them that that isn't always the case, but I do have the satisfaction of knowing that I live in a less dingy world than they do.

  John Carmack

  Thinking, Knowing, People

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• As for a picture, if it isn't worth a thousand words, the hell with it.

  Ad Reinhardt

  Design, Hell, Software

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• ...your Web browser is Ronald Reagan.

  Neal Stephenson

  Design, Software, Browsers

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• Crappy old OSes have value in the basically negative sense that changing to new ones makes us wish we'd never been born.

  Neal Stephenson

  Design, Wish, Negative

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• ...wisdom is in large part the knowledge of how to avoid doing dumb things, and thus grows globally as a function of the published inventory of stupid mistakes.

  Tim Bray

  Mistake, Stupid, Design

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