Top 72 Quotes & Sayings by Fred Brooks - Page 2

We tend to blame the physical media for most of our implementation difficulties; for the media are not "ours" in the way the ideas are, and our pride colors our judgement.

But I will argue that knowing complete product requirements up front is a quite rare exception, not the norm.

Consensus processes starve innovative design by eating the resource.

Scientists build to learn; Engineers learn to build.

Study after study shows that the very best designers produce structures that are faster, smaller, simpler, clearer, and produced with less effort. The differences between the great and the average approach an order of magnitude.

The Waterfall Model is wrong and harmful; we must outgrow it.

Process improvement is most valuable in raising the floor of a community's practice.

Job Control Language is the worst programming language ever designed anywhere by anybody for any purpose.

One can expect the human race to continue attempting systems just within or just beyond our reach; and software systems are perhaps the most intricate and complex of man's handiworks. The management of this complex craft will demand our best use of new languages and systems, our best adaptation of proven engineering management methods, liberal doses of common sense, and a God-given humility to recognize our fallibility and limitations.

...when fits of creativity run strong, more than one programmer or writer has been known to abandon the desktop for the more spacious floor.

A computer program is a message from a man to a machine. The rigidly marshaled syntax and the scrupulous definitions all exist to make intention clear to the dumb engine.

Plan to throw one (implementation) away; you will, anyhow.