Software Engineering Quotes - Page 4

• The camel has evolved to be relatively self-sufficient. On the other hand, the camel has not evolved to smell good. Neither has Perl.

  Larry Wall

  Self, Hands, Smell

  Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen, Jon Orwant (2004). “Programming Perl: 3rd Edition”, p.4, "O'Reilly Media, Inc."

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• All programming is maintenance programming, because you are rarely writing original code.

  Dave Thomas

  Writing, Maintenance, Programming

  4 Copy quote

• Don't document bad code - rewrite it.

  Brian Kernighan

  Code Quality, Programming, Documents

  18 Copy quote

• We all agree on the necessity of compromise. We just can't agree on when it's necessary to compromise.

  Larry Wall

  Playing Games, Compromise, Programming

  Usenet article, 1991.

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• A good threat is worth a thousand tests.

  Boris Beizer

  Tests, Bugs, Programming

  Boris Beizer (1990). “Software Testing Techniques”, Van Nostrand Reinhold Company

  15 Copy quote

  Show source

• About 90 percent of the downtime comes from, at most, 10 percent of the defects.

  Barry Boehm

  Downtime, Bugs, Programming

  9 Copy quote

• In fast moving markets, adaptation is significantly more important than optimization.

  Larry Constantine

  Moving, Important, Adaptation

  7 Copy quote

• The best meetings get real work done. When your people learn that your meetings actually accomplish something, they will stop making excuses to be elsewhere.

  Larry Constantine

  Teamwork, Real, People

  6 Copy quote

• 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.

  15 Copy quote

  Show source

• When to use iterative development? You should use iterative development only on projects that you want to succeed.

  Martin Fowler

  Use, Development, Want

  21 Copy quote

• As we said in the preface to the first edition, C "wears well as one's experience with it grows." With a decade more experience, we still feel that way.

  Brian Kernighan

  Way, Firsts, Language

  Brian W. Kernighan, Dennis Ritchie (1988). “C Programming Language”, p.13, Prentice Hall

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• C++ tries to guard against Murphy, not Machiavelli.

  Damian Conway

  Trying, Language, Programming

  4 Copy quote

• Perl is another example of filling a tiny, short-term need, and then being a real problem in the longer term.

  Alan Kay

  Real, Example, Needs

  "Big talk with the creator of Smalltalk - and much more". Interview with Stuart Feldman, queue.acm.org. December 27, 2004.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• A little retrospection shows that although many fine, useful software systems have been designed by committees and built as part of multipart projects, those software systems that have excited passionate fans are those that are the products of one or a few designing minds, great designers.

  Fred Brooks

  Design, Mind, Fans

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

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• We know about as much about software quality problems as they knew about the Black Plague in the 1600s. We've seen the victims' agonies and helped burn the corpses. We don't know what causes it; we don't really know if there is only one disease. We just suffer - and keep pouring our sewage into our water supply.

  Tom Van Vleck

  Agony, Water, Suffering

  4 Copy quote

• When someone says, "I want a programming language in which I need only say what I want done," give him a lollipop.

  Alan Perlis

  Funny Inspirational, Giving, Needs

  40 Copy quote

• Good code is its own best documentation. As you're about to add a comment, ask yourself, "How can I improve the code so that this comment isn't needed?" Improve the code and then document it to make it even clearer.

  Steve McConnell

  Funny Inspirational, Documentation, Add

  50 Copy quote

• It's harder than you might think to squander millions of dollars, but a flawed software development process is a tool well suited to the job.

  Alan Cooper

  Jobs, Thinking, Might

  Alan Cooper (1999). “The Inmates are Running the Asylum”, Sams Publishing

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• The fundamental problem with program maintenance is that fixing a defect has a substantial (20-50 percent) chance of introducing another. So the whole process is two steps forward and one step back.

  Fred Brooks

  Two, Maintenance, Fundamentals

  18 Copy quote

• Testing is the process of comparing the invisible to the ambiguous, so as to avoid the unthinkable happening to the anonymous.

  James Marcus Bach

  Bugs, Invisible, Process

  8 Copy quote

• Product quality has almost nothing to do with defects or their lack.

  Tom DeMarco

  Quality, Bugs, Programming

  7 Copy quote

• There has never been an unexpectedly short debugging period in the history of computers.

  Steven Levy

  Debugging, Bugs, Computer

  Steven Levy (2010). “Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution - 25th Anniversary Edition”, p.332, "O'Reilly Media, Inc."

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• Every program has (at least) two purposes: the one for which it was written and another for which it wasn't.

  Alan Perlis

  Two, Purpose, Program

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

  15 Copy quote

  Show source

• I think it's a new feature. Don't tell anyone it was an accident.

  Larry Wall

  Thinking, Requirements, Computer

  Usenet article "s///e bizarreness", groups.google.com. January 4, 1991.

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• Software projects fail for one of two general reasons: the project team lacks the knowledge to conduct a software project successfully, or the project team lacks the resolve to conduct a project effectively.

  Steve McConnell

  Teamwork, Two, Failing

  Steve McConnell (1997). “Software Project Survival Guide”, p.7, Microsoft Press

  12 Copy quote

  Show source