Programming Related Quotes Taken from the 1960s

posted in Journal
Published December 17, 2008
Advertisement
Below are a series of surprisingly relevant quotes taken from a book published in the 1970s. Some of the quotes are from the 60s.

  • Any Given Program, When Running, is obsolete.

  • Any given program costs more and takes longer

  • if a program is useful then it will have to be changed

  • if a program is useless, it will have to be documented

  • Program Complexity grows until it exceeds the capability of the programmer who must maintain it

  • Not until a program has been in production for at least six months will the most harmful error be discovered

  • If the input editor has been designed to reject all bad input, an ingenious idiot will discover a method to get bad data past it.

  • Profanity is the one language all programmers know best..

  • Investment in reliability will increase until it exceeds the probable cost of errors, or until someone insists on getting some useful work done

  • Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later

  • Fuzzy project objectives are used to avoid the embarrassment of estimating the corresponding costs

  • The effort required to correct course increases geometrically with time.

  • Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool will want to use it.
0 likes 2 comments

Comments

benryves
Some great quotes there, and I can't help but be reminded of The Tao of Programming.
December 18, 2008 05:18 AM
Evil Steve
I've got a word document full of quotes like these which I grabbed from an ST Format cover disk. I'll have to track it down when I get home...
December 18, 2008 11:08 AM
You must log in to join the conversation.
Don't have a GameDev.net account? Sign up!
Profile
Author
Advertisement
Advertisement