Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

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

More quotes by Fred Brooks

Image
Conceptual integrity is the most important consideration in system design.
Fred Brooks
Image
Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later
Fred Brooks
Image
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
Image
A basic principle of data processing teaches the folly of trying to maintain independent files in synchonism.
Fred Brooks
Image
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
Image
Predictability and great design are not friends.
Fred Brooks
Image
The Waterfall Model is wrong and harmful we must outgrow it.
Fred Brooks
Image
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.
Fred Brooks
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Product procedure...must securely protect the crown jewels, but, equally important, it must eschew building high fences around the garbage cans.
Fred Brooks
Image
Systematically identity top designers as early as possible. The best are often not the most experienced.
Fred Brooks
Image
Adjusting to the requirement for perfection is, I think, the most difficult part of learning to program.
Fred Brooks
Image
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
Image
Even the best planning is not so omniscient as to get it right the first time.
Fred Brooks
Image
Improving your process won't move you from good to great design. It'll move you from bad to average.
Fred Brooks
Image
The bearing of a child takes nine months, no matter how many women are assigned.
Fred Brooks
Image
Successful software always gets changed.
Fred Brooks
Image
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.
Fred Brooks
Image
A scientist builds in order to learn an engineer learns in order to build.
Fred Brooks