American Engineer Quotes

The Engineer is one who, in the world of physics and applied sciences, begets new things, or adapts old things to new and better uses; above all, one who, in that field, attains new results in the best way and at lowest cost.

One advantage of static factory methods is that, unlike constructors, they have names.

It's a shame that we humans are never able to pull in the same direction... [n]ot even when confronted by infinity.

In 1492 Columbus knew less about the far Atlantic than we do about the heavens, yet he chose not to sail with a flotilla of less than three ships.... So it is with interplanetary exploration: it must be done on the grand scale.

Wernher von Braun

Responsibility-driven design is inspired by the client/server model. It focuses on the contract by asking: What actions is this object responsible for? and What information does this object share?

Rebecca Wirfs-Brock

Even if a company maybe makes a promise and says, "Well, hey, look, we're not going to do anything with the data." You have no way to verify that.

Explaining why Apple will allow inspection of its AI server software

Craig Federighi

Absolute authority will be delegated. Full responsibility will be assumed. Those who succeed will receive advancement and satisfaction of desire. Those who fail will die.

The principles governing the behavior of systems are not widely understood.

Jay Wright Forrester

While there is a reasonable possibility that a peacetime armed force could be entirely voluntary, I am certain that an armed force involved in a major conflict could not be voluntary

Crawford Greenewalt

The manufacturer of chemicals has all the griefs of a maker of shoes, or bolts and nuts, or ready-to-wear clothes, and has just one more grief in addition — i.e., troubles occurring in chemical transformations.

To define it rudely but not inaptly, [engineering] is the art of doing that well with one dollar which any bungler can do with two after a fashion.

Arthur M. Wellington

Engineering is superficial only to those who view it superficially. At the heart of engineering lies existential joy.

Samuel C. Florman

Playing catch-up with the competition can only ever help you make incremental gains. It will never help you create something new.

The greatest risk we face in software development is that of overestimating our own knowledge.

Typically, a subclass augments or redefines the existing structure and behavior of its superclasses.

By long-standing tradition, I take this opportunity to savage other
designers in the thin disguise of good, clean fun.

Some of the biggest changes have been in the process of generating business strategies—what I call strategy work. Around 1980, the received wisdom was to decentralize into business units, which would each generate a strategic plan. These plans were then amalgamated up the hierarchy, in some portfolio way, for senior management. That approach has all but disappeared, and we've seen a dramatic recentralization of strategy work.

To pursue science is not to disparage the things of the spirit. In fact, to pursue science rightly is to furnish a framework on which the spirit may rise.

Sermons are not always preached from pulpits. They are written in the rocks and on the flowers of the field and the trees of the forest.

Like many fields in their early stages, the software field has had its share of project disasters: the software equivalents of Beauvais Cathedral, the S. S. Titanic, and the "Galloping Gertie" Tacoma Narrows Bridge. The frequency of these disaster projects is a serious concern: a recent survey of 600 firms indicated that 35% of them had at least one "runaway' software project.

You can drink pickle juice and imitate gorillas and do silly dances and sing stupid songs and wear funny hats and be as imperfect as you please and still be a good person. Good people are hard to find nowadays. And they're a lot more fun than perfect people any day of the week.

Enterprise Engineering is defined as that body of knowledge, principles, and practices having to do with the analysis, design, implementation and operation of an enterprise. In a continually changing and unpredictable competitive environment, the Enterprise Engineer addresses a fundamental question: how to design and improve all elements associated with the total enterprise through the use of engineering and analysis methods and tools to more effectively achieve its goals and objectives...

Donald H. Liles

When Commodore acquired Amiga in 1984, the legion of Amiga loyalists thought the world would beat a path to the better-mousetrap door. It didn't happen. The Amiga languished.

I talk to myself through the computer. I ask myself questions, leave things to be looked at again, things that you would do with a notepad. It turns out today that it's much better today to do with a personal computer rather than a notepad.

The binders, the charts, the grids may seem formidable, but the meetings themselves are built around informality, trust, emotion and humor.