Computer Scientist Quotes

Scientists nowadays rarely know how to read seriously. They are accustomed to strip-mining a paper to get the facts out and then moving on, not to mollycoddling the thing in search of nuances; there probably aren't any.

David Gelernter

The only way to engineer the future tomorrow is to have lived in it yesterday.

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

Jesse James Garrett

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

Jakob Nielsen (usability consultant)

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

Edmund Berkeley

We try to solve the problem by rushing through the design process so that enough time is left at the end of the project to uncover the errors that were made because we rushed through the design process

In a world of scarce resources, globalization without new technology is unsustainable.

Programming is the art of writing essays in crystal clear prose and making them executable

Per Brinch Hansen

The major accomplishment of analyzing illiteracy so far has been the listing of symptoms: the decrease in functional literacy; a general degradation of writing skills and reading comprehension; an alarming increase of packaged language (cliches used in speeches, canned messages); and a general tendency to substitute visual media (especially television and video) for written language.

There are three things a man must do before his life is done; Write two lines in APL, And make the buggers run.

Stan Kelly-Bootle

Much to the surprise of the builders of the first digital computers, programs written for them usually did not work.

As Hamlet tells his friend, There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.'' Well then, we must try harder to dream!

Gregory Chaitin

We can tell people abstract rules of thumb which we have derived from prior experiences, but it is very difficult for other people to learn from these. We have difficulty remembering such abstractions, but we can more easily remember a good story. Stories give life to past experience. Stories make the events in memory memorable to others and to ourselves. This is one of the reasons why people like to tell stories.

The best designers in the world all squint when they look at something. They squint to see the forest from the trees - to find the right balance. Squint at the world. You will see more, by seeing less.

The nature of the hybrid research/design model means that we often can see design efforts as attempts not to concretize the outcomes of research but instead to justify, promote, or initiate them

The old computing was about what computers could do; the new computing is about what users can do. Successful technologies are those that are in harmony with users' needs. They must support relationships and activities that enrich the users' experiences.

Ben Shneiderman

The fact is, when you look at the best teams—like the ones that existed at Toyota or 3M when Takeuchi or Nonaka wrote their paper, or the ones at Google or Salesforce.com or Amazon today—there isn't this separation of roles.

Jeff Sutherland

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

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.

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

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

Douglas A. Lawson

A manager's most important work is helping the people doing the work. Give them a goal and let them work. Remove any impediments that get in their way. Do anything that make them more effective or productive. Then the organization can capitalize on the fruits of their work.

Pascal and C are special-purpose languages for manipulating the registers and memory of a von Neumann-style computer.

If our designs are failing due to the constant rain of changing requirements, it is our designs that are at fault. We must somehow find a way to make our designs resilient to such changes and protect them from rotting.

Robert Cecil Martin

I'm a future-hacker; I'm trying to get root access to the future. I want to raid its system of thought.