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There is no single development, in either technology or management technique, which by itself promises even one order-of-magnitude improvement within a decade in productivity, in reliability, in simplicity.

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
Technology
Improvement
Either
Simplicity
Within
Technique
Order
Decades
Reliability
Even
Management
Magnitude
Promise
Decade
Development
Productivity
Single
Promises

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The hardest part of the software task is arriving at a complete and consistent specification, and much of the essence of building a program is in fact the debugging of the specification.
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The programmer, like the poet, works only slightly removed from pure thought-stuff. He builds his castles in the air, from air, creating by exertion of the imagination. Few media of creation are so flexible, so easy to polish and rework, so readily capable of realizing grand conceptual structures.
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Adjusting to the requirement for perfection is, I think, the most difficult part of learning to program.
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...when fits of creativity run strong, more than one programmer or writer has been known to abandon the desktop for the more spacious floor.
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System debugging, like astronomy, has always been done chiefly at night.
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Plan to throw one (implementation) away you will, anyhow.
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Systematically identity top designers as early as possible. The best are often not the most experienced.
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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.
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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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Even the best planning is not so omniscient as to get it right the first time.
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The bearing of a child takes nine months, no matter how many women are assigned.
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Originality is no excuse for ignorance.
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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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Successful software always gets changed.
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Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later
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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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I am more convinced than ever. Conceptual integrity is central to product quality.
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Men and months are interchangeable commodities only when a task can be partitioned among many workers with no communication among them.
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Design work doesn't just satisfy requirements, it elicits them.
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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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