Software

“100% test coverage is insufficient. 35% of the faults are missing logic paths.” – Robert Glass
“All too often even unit tests don’t even check boundary conditions, perhaps out of fear that the code might break.” – Jack Gannsle
“Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live.” – Martin Golding
“And they looked upon the SW and saw that it was good. But they just had to add one more feature…”
“As intuition is often useless, measuring is a vastly superior alternative.” – Andre Alexandrescu
“At first I hoped that such a technically unsound project would collapse but I soon realized it was doomed to success.” – C. A. Hoare
“Broken gets fixed, shitty lives forever.” – Unknown
“Could our process, properly followed, have detected this situation?” – Glen Alleman
“Debugging is like farting – it’s not so bad when it’s your own code.”
“Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it.” – Brian Kernighan
“Design and programming are human activities; forget that and all is lost.” – Bjarne Stroustrup
“…documentation is a love letter that you write to your future self.” – Damian Conway
“Don’t use “emergent design” as an excuse for foolishly hoping for the best.” – Simon Brown
“Excessive or irrational schedules are probably the single most destructive influence in all of software” – Capers Jones
“Far too often, “software engineering” is neither engineering nor about software.” – Bjarne Stroustrup
“For today’s computer science students, learning C is like taking an elective class in Latin.” – Michael Barr
“Giving advice to developers is only slightly less risky than placing judgment on their work.” – Unknown
“I conclude that 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.” – C. A. Hoare
“If debugging is the process of removing software bugs, then programming must be the process of putting them in.” – Edsger Dijkstra
“If we can’t fix it, then it ain’t broke.”
“If you don’t have a good name for it, give it a bad name. A really, really bad name so you’ll fix it later.” – Kent Beck
“If you use hardware long enough, it breaks. If you use software long enough, it works.” – Unknown
“I have always wished for my computer to be as easy to use as my telephone; my wish has come true because I can no longer figure out how to use my telephone.” – Bjarne Stroustrup
“I have only proven the algorithm correct, not tested it.” – Donald Knuth
“I hold great hopes for UML, which seems to offer a way to build products that integrates hardware and software, and that is an intrinsic part of development from design to implementation. But UML will fail if management won’t pay for quite extensive training, or toss the approach when panic reigns.” – Jack Gannsle
“I would change the world, but I don’t have the source code.”
“Incorrect documentation is often worse than no documentation.” – Bertrand Meyer
“It takes 10 years for any disruptive technology to become pervasive in the design community.” – Leibson’s Law
“It’s software development, not documentation development.” – Scott Ambler
“Measuring programming progress by lines of code is like measuring aircraft building progress by weight.” – Bill Gates
“Most software failures come from the interactions between objects rather than being a property of an object or method in isolation.” – Jim Coplien
“One man’s requirement is another man’s design.” – Al Davis
“Premature optimization is the root of all evil” -Donald Knuth
“Programming can be fun, so can cryptography; however they should not be combined.” – Kreitzberg and Shneiderman
“Shipping is a feature. A really important feature. Your product must have it.” – Joel Spolsky
“Should array indices start at 0 or 1? My compromise of 0.5 was rejected without, I thought, proper consideration.” — Stan Kelly-Bootle
“Software and cathedrals are much the same – first we build them, then we pray.”
“Software is too important to be left to programmers.” – Meilir Page-Jones.
“Sometimes it pays to stay in bed on Monday, rather than spending the rest of the week debugging Monday’s code.” – Christopher Thompson
“Standardization without experience is abhorrent.” – Bjarne Stroustrup
“The best programs and software systems exhibit a sense of consistency and elegance, as if they are shaped by a single creative mind, even when they are in fact the product of many.” – Fred Brooks
“The bitterness of poor system performance remains long after the sweetness of low prices and prompt delivery are forgotten.” – Jerry Lim
“The connections between modules are the assumptions which the modules make about each other.” – David Parnas
“The key to understanding complexity is abstraction, which means rising above the code level.” – Leslie Lamport
“The main weakness of OOP is that too many people try to force too many problems into a hierarchical mould. Not every program should be object-oriented. As alternatives, consider plain classes, generic programming, and free-standing functions (as in math, C, and Fortran).” – Bjarne Stroustrup.
“The money’s gone, the time’s gone, and the damn thing don’t work!” – William Livingston
“The most important single aspect of software development is to be clear about what you are trying to build.” – Bjarne Stroustrup
“The only intuitive interface is the nipple. After that it’s all learned.” – Bruce Ediger
“The only thing that should be reused from some projects is the hard disk space.” – Charles Manning
“The palest of ink is better than the best memory.” – Chinese proverb
“The product and process must match.”
“The question of whether computers can think is like the question of whether submarines can swim.” – Edsger W. Dijkstra
“The sooner you start to code, the longer the program will take.” — Roy Carlson
“There are just two kinds of languages: the ones everybody complains about and the ones nobody uses.” – Bjarne Stroustrup
“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.” – C.A.R. Hoare.
“There are two ways to write error-free programs; only the third works.” – Alan Perlis
“The shortest pencil is longer than the longest memory.”
“The team that built the present system is the best one to evolve it – but seldom the right one to create its replacement.”
“The trouble with quick and dirty is that dirty remains long after quick has been forgotten.” – Steve McConnell
“The worst strategic mistake a software company can make is to rewrite code from scratch. There’s an unbelievable amount of learned experience reflected in any well-used and long-maintained code, no matter how cumbersome and kludgy you think it is. Start from scratch and you have to make a bunch of mistakes all over again.” – Joel Spolsky
“To communicate requirements, someone has to write them down.” – Scott Berkun
“Unjustifiable precision—in requirements or plans—has proven to be a substantial yet subtle recurring obstacle to success. Most of the time, early precision is just plain dishonest and serves to provide a façade for more progress of more quality than actually exists.” – Grady Booch
“We prefer errors to manifest themselves early and spectacularly so that we can fix them.” – Bjarne Stroustrup
“We should prefer sequential access of compact structures, not thoughtlessly use linked structures, and avoid general memory allocators that scatter logically related data.” – Bjarne Stroustrup
“When someone says, ‘I want a programming language in which I need only say what I wish done,’ give him a lollipop” – Alan Perlis
“Without abstractions, all our code would be completely interdependent and unmaintainable.” – Jeff Atwood
“Writing a program in assembly is like writing a novel in math.” – ???
“Writing stuff down is a great way to make information scale…because you don’t.” – Michael “Rands In Repose” Lopp
“You know you’re brilliant, but maybe you’d like to understand what you did 2 weeks from now.” – Linus Torvalds
“Your code is both good and original. Unfortunately the parts that are good are not original, and the parts that are original are not good.”