Software Quotes - Page 21

• About three million computers get sold every year in China, people don't pay for the software. Someday they will, though. And as long as they're going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade.

  Bill Gates

  Money, Business, Years

  Bill Gates' Speech at the University of Washington, archive.fortune.com. July 20, 1998.

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• A lot of people assume that creating software is purely a solitary activity where you sit in an office with the door closed all day and write lots of code.

  Bill Gates

  Writing, Doors, Creating

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• Certainly there's a phenomenon around open source. You know free software will be a vibrant area. There will be a lot of neat things that get done there.

  Bill Gates

  Done, Source, Neat

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• Microsoft Research has a thing called the Sense Cam that, as you walk around, it's taking photos all the time. And the software will filter and find the ones that are interesting without having to think, 'Let's get out the camera and get that shot.' You just have that, and software helps you pick what you want.

  Bill Gates

  Thinking, Interesting, Cameras

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• In a user lead model, users are bringing in their own technology... and you can build software then, around the user.

  Aaron Levie

  Technology, Building, Models

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• We must not forget that the wheel is reinvented so often because it is a very good idea; I've learned to worry more about the soundness of ideas that were invented only once.

  David Parnas

  Ideas, Worry, Wheels

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• We offer them mediocrity while calling it magic. We offer them the illusion of intelligent software, seducing them into surrendering the task of thinking to the machine. Of course, the machine isn't thinking, which means that nobody is.

  Larry Constantine

  Mean, Intelligent, Thinking

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• ...heavy investments in information technology have delivered disappointing results - largely because companies tend to use technology to mechanize old ways of doing business...Instead of embedding outdated processes in silicon and software, we should obliterate them and start over.

  Michael Martin Hammer

  Technology, Starting Over, Use

  "Reengineering work: don't automate, obliterate". Harvard Business Review, Volume 68, No.4, pp. 104, 1990.

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• We're going from a world of customized software to standardized platforms.

  Aaron Levie

  World, Building, Platforms

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• For most software startups, this translates to keep growing. For hardware startups, it translates to don't let your ship date slip.

  Sam Altman

  Growing, Ships, Hardware

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• The trouble with programmers is that you can never tell what a programmer is doing until it's too late.

  Seymour Cray

  Technology, Too Late, Coders

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• I believe good software is written by small teams of two, three, or four people interacting with each other at a very high, dense level.

  John Warnock

  Team, Believe, Two

  Interview with Susan Lammers, programmersatwork.wordpress.com. 1986.

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• One can expect the human race to continue attempting systems just within or just beyond our reach; and software systems are perhaps the most intricate and complex of man's handiworks. The management of this complex craft will demand our best use of new languages and systems, our best adaptation of proven engineering management methods, liberal doses of common sense, and a God-given humility to recognize our fallibility and limitations.

  Fred Brooks

  Humility, Men, Race

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• In almost every job now, people use software and work with information to enable their organization to operate more effectively.

  Bill Gates

  Jobs, Organization, People

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• Modern cyberspace is a deadly festering swamp, teeming with dangerous programs such as 'viruses,' 'worms,' 'Trojan horses' and 'licensed Microsoft software' that can take over your computer and render it useless.

  Dave Barry

  Funny, Horse, Humor

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• We will still be enormously profitable and by far the most profitable enterprise software company.

  Larry Ellison

  Inspirational, Enterprise, Company

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• In the software business there are many enterprises for which it is not clear that science can help them; that science should try is not clear either.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Trying, Helping, Should

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• Once a term like "open source" entered our vocabulary, one could recast the whole public policy calculus in very different terms, so that instead of discussing the public interest, we are discussing the interests of individual software developers, while claiming that this is a discussion about "innovation" and "progress," not "accountability" or "security."

  Evgeny Morozov

  Vocabulary, Accountability, Innovation

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• The belief that complex systems require armies of designers and programmers is wrong. A system that is not understood in its entirety, or at least to a significant degree of detail by a single individual, should probably not be built.

  Niklaus Wirth

  Army, Degrees, Details

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• The problem is not software 'friendliness'. It is conceptual clarity. A globe does not say, 'good morning'. It is simple and clear, not 'friendly'.

  Ted Nelson

  Morning, Simple, Friendly

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• Observe that for the programmer, as for the chef, the urgency of the patron may govern the scheduled completion of the task, but it cannot govern the actual completion. An omelette, promised in two minutes, may appear to be progressing nicely. But when it has not set in two minutes, the customer has two choices - wait or eat it raw. Software customers have had the same choices.

  Fred Brooks

  Two, Waiting, Choices

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• Some people, through luck and skill, end up with a lot of assets. If you're good at kicking a ball, writing software, investing in stocks, it pays extremely well.

  Bill Gates

  Writing, Skills, People

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• I obviously think that freely available software can not only keep up with the evolution of commercial software, but often exceed what you can do commercially.

  Linus Torvalds

  Thinking, Evolution, Can Not

  Source: www.linuxfocus.org

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• 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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• No matter how slick the demo is in rehearsal, when you do it in front of a live audience the probability of a flawless presentation is inversely proportional to the number of people watching, raised to the power of the amount of money involved.

  Mark Gibbs

  Technology, Numbers, People

  "The myth of the digital lifestyle" by Mark Gibbs, www.networkworld.com. January 9, 2006.

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