Software Quotes

252 Sourced quotes

In the months before I made wiki, we had been having an argument. I think Kent Beck and I were on one side. People who had a lot of faith in the prevailing dogma of software engineering were on the other side. We said, "Collective code ownership is good." They said, "That's ridiculous. You'll never get responsibility. You'll never get quality if you don't have responsibility. And the only way you'll get responsibility is ownership. You have to pin the bugs back on somebody if you want them to ever rise above producing bugs." And I said, "Well that's wrong."

Ward Cunningham

In 10 years, you'll see 99% of the hardware and software systems sold through what are fundamentally retail stores.

Professionalism has no place in art, and hacking is art. Software Engineering might be science; but that's not what I do. I'm a hacker, not an engineer.

Computers and music are converging in a new era of digital Renaissance as more and more musicians such as will. i. am are learning how to code while an increasing number of software programmers are learning how to play music.

Most software today is very much like an Egyptian pyramid with millions of bricks piled on top of each other, with no structural integrity, but just done by brute force and thousands of slaves.

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.

Some people have called the book the "bible of software engineering". I would agree with that in one respect: that is, everybody quotes it, some people read it, and a few people go by it.

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

The food market is much bigger than the software services market. And the money goes straight into the hands of millions of farmers. The spinoffs are enormous — jobs, houses, durables, a whole new consumption boom will start in rural areas.

Sometimes at night I worry about TAMMY. I worry that she might get tired of it all. Tired of running at sixty-six terahertz, tired of all those processing cycles, every second of every hour of every day. I worry that one of these cycles she might just halt her own subroutine and commit software suicide. And then I would have to do an error report, and I don't know how I would even begin to explain that to Microsoft.

The most important single aspect of software development is to be clear about what you are trying to build.

Bjarne Stroustrup

In this remarkable book on computer design, long-known in the field and widely used in manuscript form, Gerrit A. Blaauw and Frederick P. Brooks, Jr. provide a definitive guide and reference for practicing computer architects and for students. The book complements Brooks' recently updated classic, The Mythical Man-Month, focusing here on the design of "hardware" and there on "software," here on the "content" of computer architecture and there on the "process" of architecture design. The book's focus on "architecture" issues complements Blaauw's early work on "implementation" techniques. Having experienced most of the computer age, the authors draw heavily on their first-hand knowledge, emphasizing timeless insights and observations.

Open source is a development methodology; free software is a social movement.

Richard Stallman

The dictionary defines "economics" as "a social science concerned chiefly with description and analysis of the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services." Here is another definition of economics which I think is more helpful in explaining how economics relates to software engineering.

There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult. It demands the same skill, devotion, insight, and even inspiration as the discovery of the simple physical laws which underlie the complex phenomena of nature.

A subsystem is a set of classes (and possibly other subsystems) collaborating to fulfill a set of responsibilities. Although subsystems do not exist as the software executes, they are useful conceptual entities.

Rebecca Wirfs-Brock

Originally, I wanted a machine that would cost $100. My idea was to spend nothing on the console technology so all the money could be spent on improving the interface and software. If we hadn't used NAND flash memory [to store data such as games and photos] and other pricey parts, we might have succeeded.

On Wii

Shigeru Miyamoto

With the growing interest in complex adaptive systems, artificial life, swarms and simulated societies, the concept of collective intelligence is coming more and more to the fore. The basic idea is that a group of individuals (e. g. people, insects, robots, or software agents) can be smart in a way that none of its members is. Complex, apparently intelligent behavior may emerge from the synergy created by simple interactions between individuals that follow simple rules.

Francis Heylighen

This new knowledge economy will rely heavily on knowledge workers.... the most striking growth will be in knowledge technologists: computer technicians, software designers, analysts in clinical labs, manufacturing technologists, paralegals.... They are not, as a rule, much better paid than traditional skilled workers, but they see themselves as professionals. Just as unskilled manual workers in manufacturing were the dominant social and political force in the 20th century, knowledge technologists are likely to become the dominant social—-and perhaps also political—-force over the next decades.

In short, I suggest that the programmer should continue to understand what he is doing, that his growing product remains firmly within his intellectual grip. It is my sad experience that this suggestion is repulsive to the average experienced programmer, who clearly derives a major part of his professional excitement from not quite understanding what he is doing. In this streamlined age, one of our most undernourished psychological needs is the craving for Black Magic and apparently the automatic computer can satisfy this need for the professional software engineer, who is secretly enthralled by the gigantic risks he takes in his daring irresponsibility. For his frustrations I have no remedy......

Edsger W. Dijkstra

From a million people, it will benefit 10 million people. If that is what has happened in software, imagine what will happen in agriculture.

While it is becoming increasingly obvious that the fundamental architecture of a system has a profound Influence on the quality of its human factors, the vast majority of human factors studies concern the surface of hardware (keyboards, screens) or the very surface of the software (command names, menu formats).

Lewis M. Branscomb

In a quality object-oriented software system, you will find many classes that speak the language of the domain expert

Unlike Rachel, Player One has a complete overview both of the world and of time. Player One's life is more like a painting than it is a story. Player One can see everything with a glance and can change tenses at will. Player One has ultimate freedom, the ultimate software on the ultimate hardware. That realm is also the one place where Player One feels, for lack of a better word, normal.

Douglas Coupland

Really great blogs do not take the place of great microprocessors. Great blogs do not replace great software. Lots and lots of blogs does not replace lots and lots of sales.