Computer Scientist Quotes

In a world filled with violence, hatred, and suspicion, giving is an expression of faith, trust, and concern.

Douglas A. Lawson

The World is more complicated than most of our theories make it out to be.

Edmund Berkeley

Constructs extraneous to the real world should be eliminated from the analysis model. They may be needed later during design, but not now. For example, CPU subroutine, process, algorithm, and interrupt are implementation constructs for most applications [and should be excluded from the analysis model]...

Today some evidence arises that UML will more and more be used not as a specification language but as a high level programming language. This has some advantages, as if the concepts of UML are executable, they can immediately be animated and tested, or the generated code even be used as implementation. Thus UML probably will have an implementation-oriented semantics describing this animation.

Zappa was not a protester or an activist. He was merely a man who used his brain.

Among the formal graphical methods are Frege's (1879) Begriffsschrift, Peirce's (1909) existential graphs, and Sowa's (1984) conceptual graphs. These three are based in first-order predicate logic.

Asking for efficiency and adaptability in the same program is like asking for a beautiful and modest wife. Although beauty and modesty have been known to occur in the same woman, we'll probably have to settle for one or the other. At least that's better than neither.

Gerald Weinberg

In any conflict between X and Y, there are three paths to peace. X can prevail, Y can prevail, or X and Y can agree to leave the battle lines where they are now.

Reliability engineers often assume that reliability and safety are synonymous, but this assumption is true only in special cases.

The system should always keep users informed about what is going on, through appropriate feedback within reasonable time.

Jakob Nielsen (usability consultant)

The greatest danger to good computer science research today may be excessive relevance. Evidence for the worldwide fascination with computers is everywhere, from the articles on the financial, and even the front pages of the newspapers, to the difficulties that even the most prestigious universities experience in finding and keeping faculty in computer science. The best professors, instead of teaching bright students, join start-up companies.

Computer-aided design is not automatic design, although it must include many automatic design features. By automatic design we mean design procedures which are capable of being completely specified in a form which a computer can execute without human intervention.

Douglas T. Ross

An object in OOA represents a single typical but unspecified instance of something in the real world - any airplane, I don't care which one, as long as it is typical. The object-oriented analyst distinguishes this concept from that of a specified instance: Airplane number N2713A, Air Force One, or The Spirit of St. Louis, for example.

Information Engineering is the application of an interlocking set of formal techniques for the planning, analysis, design, and construction of information systems on the enterprise wide basis or across a major sector of the enterprise.

Perhaps an underlying cause [of doubt as to the future of information science] is in some cases... the apprehension that information science may become submerged in the larger field of computer science.

Brian Campbell Vickery

There's something deeper than making money off stuff. Being part of creating stuff for the universe is awesome.

Ilya Zhitomirskiy

A man, a plan, a canoe, pasta, heros, rajahs, a coloratura, maps, snipe, percale, macaroni, a gag, a banana bag, a tan, a tag, a banana bag again (or a camel), a crepe, pins, Spam, a rut, a Rolo, cash, a jar, sore hats, a peon, a canal - Panama

Guy L. Steele Jr.

Effective communication is a key factor in the success of your product.

Jesse James Garrett

We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.

Robert Wilensky

The most profound technologies are those that disappear. They weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it.

As more and more good ideas come under the protection of patents, it may become increasingly unlikely that any one program can incorporate the state of the art in user-interface design without sinking into a quagmire of unending royalty payments and legal battles.

Nathaniel Borenstein

Start by putting yourself in your users' shoes. Why are they coming to your site? If you look at most Web sites, you'd presume that the answer is "User is extremely bored and wishes to stare at a blank screen for several minutes while a flashing icon loads, then stare at the flashing icon for a few more minutes."

Philip Greenspun

Two views on the scope of technology have pervaded (and shaped) studies of technology, reflecting the different claims to generalizability that researchers have intended with their work. The one set of studies has focused on technology as "hardware," that is, the equipment, machines, and instruments that humans use in productive activities, whether industrial or informational devices.

Wanda Orlikowski

And programming computers was so fascinating. You create your own little universe, and then it does what you tell it to do.

This ambiguity is another example of a growing problem with mathematical notation: There aren't enough squiggles to go around.