Software Development

If debugging is the

If debugging is the process of removing software bugs, then programming must be the process of putting them in. Edsger Dijkstra

Hofstadter’s Law: It always

Hofstadter’s Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter’s Law Douglas Hofstadter

One bad programmer can

One bad programmer can easily create two new jobs a year. David Parnas

Debugging is twice as

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

There is no one “root of all evil” in software development. Design is hard in many ways. People tend to underestimate the intellectual and practical difficulties involved in building a significant system involving software. It is not and will not be reduced to a simple mechanical “assembly line” process. Creativity, engineering principles, and evolutionary change … Read more

The most important single

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

The most fundamental problem

The most fundamental problem in software development is complexity. There is only one basic way of dealing with complexity: divide and conquer Bjarne Stroustrup

Imagine the disincentive to

Imagine the disincentive to software development if after months of work another company could come along and copy your work and market it under its own name…without legal restraints to such copying, companies like Apple could not afford to advance the state of the art. Bill Gates

There are a variety

There are a variety of techniques for breaking software down into pieces and making software development more efficient. Many of these techniques have been sort of… and everybody got excited about but very little benefit was actually derived once the thing was put into practice. Bill Gates

Measuring programming progress by

Measuring programming progress by lines of code is like measuring aircraft building progress by weight. Bill Gates