Software Quotes Page 2

Hardware: where the people in your company's software section will tell you the problem is. Software: where the people in your company's hardware section will tell you the problem is.

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

Although many philosophers used to dismiss the relevance of neuroscience on grounds that what mattered was the software, not the hardware, increasingly philosophers have come to recognize that understanding how the brain works is essential to understanding the mind.

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

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.

The cheapest, fastest, and most reliable components are those that aren't there.

Learning to program has no more to do with designing interactive software than learning to touch type has to do with writing poetry

You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time.

I just became one with my browser software.

Hiring people to write code to sell is not the same as hiring people to design and build durable, usable, dependable software.

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.

Solving a problem simply means representing it so as to make the solution transparent.

If you think good architecture is expensive, try bad architecture.

It's a curious thing about our industry: not only do we not learn from our mistakes, we also don't learn from our successes.

There's an old story about the person who wished his computer were as easy to use as his telephone. That wish has come true, since I no longer know how to use my telephone.

Interactive computers and software will, I think, provide a less costly method of doing some kinds of inquiry, in knowledge acquisition and even reasoning and interaction.

However, writing software without defects is not sufficient.

In my experience, it is at least as difficult to write software that is safe - that is, software that behaves reasonably under adverse conditions.

Design is in everything we make, but it's also between those things.

It's a mix of craft, science, storytelling, propaganda, and philosophy.

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

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

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

An API that isn't comprehensible isn't usable.

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

The computer was born to solve problems that did not exist before.

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

Ironically, the thing that will likely make the least improvement in the ease of use of software-based products is new technology. There is little difference technically between a complicated, confusing program and a simple, fun, and powerful product.

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.

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

Controlling complexity is the essence of computer programming.

Know what you're talking about.

An organisation that treats its programmers as morons will soon have programmers that are willing and able to act like morons only.

A primary cause of complexity is that software vendors uncritically adopt almost any feature that users want.

If the users don't control the program, the program controls the users.

With proprietary software, there is always some entity, the "owner" of the program, that controls the program and through it, exercises power over its users. A nonfree program is a yoke, an instrument of unjust power.

Avoiding complexity reduces bugs.

With multimedia, everything blurs. Software takes the concept of the imagination and makes it something you can edit, tweak, and transform with digital techniques. Everything becomes an edited file.