Software Quotes - Page 24

• The most fundamental problem in software development is complexity. There is only one basic way of dealing with complexity: divide and conquer

  Bjarne Stroustrup

  Fundamentals, Development, Way

  23 Copy quote

• If you need to visualize the soul, think of it as a cross between a wolf howl, a photon and a dribble of dark molasses. But what it really is, as near as I can tell, is a packet of information. It's a program, a piece of hyperspatial software designed explicitly to interface with the Mystery. Not a mystery, mind you - the Mystery. The one that can never be solved.

  Tom Robbins

  Dark, Thinking, Soul

  9 Copy quote

• More than the act of testing, the act of designing tests is one of the best bug preventers known.

  Boris Beizer

  Design, Tests, Bugs

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

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Software never was perfect and won't get perfect. But is that a license to create garbage? The missing ingredient is our reluctance to quantify quality.

  Boris Beizer

  Perfect, Missing, Quality

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

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• In software systems it is often the early bird that makes the worm.

  Alan Perlis

  Technology, Bird, Worms

  28 Copy quote

• 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

  9 Copy quote

• I believe that software, and in fact entire companies, should be run in a way that assumes that the sum of the talent of people outside your walls is greater than the sum of the few you have inside. None of us are as smart as all of us.

  Matt Mullenweg

  Running, Wall, Smart

  15 Copy quote

• Premature optimization is the root of all evil.

  Donald Knuth

  Science, Roots, Evil

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

  19 Copy quote

  Show source

• In a previous life I wrote the software that controlled my physics experiments. That software had to deal with all kinds of possible failures in equipment. That is probably where I learned to rely on multiple safety nets inside and around my systems.

  Wietse Venema

  Safety, Kind, Physics

  52 Copy quote

• I want to avoid locking people into solutions that work only with Postfix. People should have a choice in what software they want to use with Postfix, be it anti-virus or otherwise.

  Wietse Venema

  Should Have, People, Choices

  4 Copy quote

• Like all software, Qmail can survive only when it keeps up with changing requirements.

  Wietse Venema

  Requirements

  4 Copy quote

• A great lathe operator commands several times the wage of an average lathe operator, but a great writer of software code is worth 10,000 times the price of an average software writer.

  Bill Gates

  Technology, Average, Computer

  14 Copy quote

• 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

  7 Copy quote

• The Postfix security model is based on keeping software simple and stupid.

  Wietse Venema

  Stupid, Simple, Models

  4 Copy quote

• The challenge with Postfix, or with any piece of software, is to update software without introducing problems.

  Wietse Venema

  Challenges, Pieces, Updates

  4 Copy quote

• Writing software that's safe even in the presence of bugs makes the challenge even more interesting.

  Wietse Venema

  Writing, Interesting, Challenges

  7 Copy quote

• This will surprise some of your readers, but my primary interest is not with computer security. I am primarily interested in writing software that works as intended.

  Wietse Venema

  Writing, Computer, Surprise

  52 Copy quote

• I was trying to figure out what to do next, I'd been accumulating ideas for productivity tools - software people could use every day, particularly to help organize their lives.

  Mitchell Kapor

  Ideas, People, Trying

  6 Copy quote

• Like many older fans of Free Software and Open Source, I have discovered that it is really only free in the sense that the time you spend on it is worthless.

  Erik Naggum

  Fans, Source, Worthless

  "The Next Generation of Lisp Programmers". Usenet discussion groups, groups.google.com. August 24, 2002.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Elegance? It may seem odd to non-scientists, but there is an aesthetic in software as there is in every other area of intellectual endeavour. Truly great programmers are like great poets or great mathematicians - they can achieve in a few lines what lesser mortals can only approach in three volumes

  John Naughton

  Intellectual, Three, Lines

  4 Copy quote

• What kind of programmer is so divorced from reality that she thinks she'll get complex software right the first time?

  James Alan Gardner

  Reality, Thinking, Firsts

  James Alan Gardner (2014). “Ascending”, p.176, Open Road Media

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I really think it is amazing that people actually buy software.

  Bill Budge

  Thinking, People

  4 Copy quote

• Never in the annals of software engineering was so much owed by so many to so few lines of code

  Martin Fowler

  Engineering, Lines, Code

  27 Copy quote

• My own personal dream is that the majority of the web runs on open source software.

  Matt Mullenweg

  Running, Dream, Majority

  "Big Omaha 2010". Conference Interview, May 2010.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• One of the problems with computers, particularly for the older people, is they were befuddled by them, and the computers have gotten better. They have gotten easier to use. They have gotten less expensive. The software interfaces have made things a lot more accessible

  Steve Case

  People, Use, Computer

  7 Copy quote