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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.

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
Faith
Einstein
Nature
Amusing
Simplified
Must
Arbitrary
Capricious
Engineers
Comforts
Programming
Argued
Software
Explanations
Explanation
Repeatedly
Comfort
Engineer

More quotes by Fred Brooks

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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.
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Nine people can't make a baby in a month.
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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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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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System debugging, like astronomy, has always been done chiefly at night.
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Predictability and great design are not friends.
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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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A basic principle of data processing teaches the folly of trying to maintain independent files in synchonism.
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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.
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The Waterfall Model is wrong and harmful we must outgrow it.
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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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I am more convinced than ever. Conceptual integrity is central to product quality.
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Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later
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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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Originality is no excuse for ignorance.
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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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Conceptual integrity is the most important consideration in system design.
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Design work doesn't just satisfy requirements, it elicits them.
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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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