Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
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.
Fred Brooks
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
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
Facts
Hardest
Specification
Part
Tasks
Debugging
Much
Complete
Specifications
Program
Arriving
Essence
Programming
Building
Software
Learning
Consistent
Fact
Task
More quotes by Fred Brooks
Plan to throw one (implementation) away you will, anyhow.
Fred Brooks
Adjusting to the requirement for perfection is, I think, the most difficult part of learning to program.
Fred Brooks
You can learn more from failure than success. In failure you're forced to find out what part did not work. But in success you can believe everything you did was great, when in fact some parts may not have worked at all. Failure forces you to face reality.
Fred Brooks
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
The brain alone is intricate beyond mapping, powerful beyond imitation, rich in diversity, self-protecting, and self-renewing. The secret is that it is grown, not built.
Fred Brooks
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
Fred Brooks
Conceptual integrity is the most important consideration in system design.
Fred Brooks
The Waterfall Model is wrong and harmful we must outgrow it.
Fred Brooks
Nine people can't make a baby in a month.
Fred Brooks
...when fits of creativity run strong, more than one programmer or writer has been known to abandon the desktop for the more spacious floor.
Fred Brooks
Product procedure...must securely protect the crown jewels, but, equally important, it must eschew building high fences around the garbage cans.
Fred Brooks
Successful software always gets changed.
Fred Brooks
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.
Fred Brooks
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.
Fred Brooks
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.
Fred Brooks
Show me your flowcharts and conceal your tables, and I shall continue to be mystified. Show me your tables, and I won't usually need your flowcharts they'll be obvious.
Fred Brooks
A scientist builds in order to learn an engineer learns in order to build.
Fred Brooks
Systematically identity top designers as early as possible. The best are often not the most experienced.
Fred Brooks
I am more convinced than ever. Conceptual integrity is central to product quality.
Fred Brooks
Design work doesn't just satisfy requirements, it elicits them.
Fred Brooks
