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Adjusting to the requirement for perfection is, I think, the most difficult part of learning to program.

Fred Brooks

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Fred Brooks
Age: 93
Born: 1931
Born: April 19
Computer Scientist
Engineer
Mathematician
Software Engineer
University Teacher
Durham
North Carolina
Frederick Phillips Brooks
Jr.
Frederick P. Brooks Jr.
Frederick Phillips Fred Brooks
Jr
Frederick P. Brooks
Frederick Phillips
Learning
Difficult
Requirement
Part
Adjusting
Think
Programmers
Thinking
Requirements
Programming
Perfection
Program

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Nine people can't make a baby in a month.
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Einstein repeatedly argued that there must be simplified explanations of nature, because God is not capricious or arbitrary. No such faith comforts the software engineer.
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Successful software always gets changed.
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Product procedure...must securely protect the crown jewels, but, equally important, it must eschew building high fences around the garbage cans.
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System debugging, like astronomy, has always been done chiefly at night.
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The programmer's primary weapon in the never-ending battle against slow system is to change the intramodular structure. Our first response should be to reorganize the modules' data structures.
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Conceptual integrity is the most important consideration in system design.
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The term architecture is used here to describe the attributes of a system as seen by the programmer, i.e., the conceptual structure and functional behavior, as distinct from the organization of the data flow and controls, the logical design, and the physical implementation. i. Additional details concerning the architecture
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It is very difficult to make a vigorous, plausible, and job-risking defense of an estimate that is derived by no quantitative method, supported by little data, and certified chiefly by the hunches of the managers
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A little retrospection shows that although many fine, useful software systems have been designed by committees and built as part of multipart projects, those software systems that have excited passionate fans are those that are the products of one or a few designing minds, great designers.
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The boss must first distinguish between action information and status information. He must discipline himself not to act on problems his managers can solve, and never to act on problems when he is explicitly reviewing status.
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Even the best planning is not so omniscient as to get it right the first time.
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More software projects have gone awry for lack of calendar time than for all other causes combined.
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Design work doesn't just satisfy requirements, it elicits them.
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I am more convinced than ever. Conceptual integrity is central to product quality.
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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.
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Systematically identity top designers as early as possible. The best are often not the most experienced.
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A scientist builds in order to learn an engineer learns in order to build.
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Improving your process won't move you from good to great design. It'll move you from bad to average.
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