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More software projects have gone awry for lack of calendar time than for all other causes combined.

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
Time
Calendar
Calendars
Combined
Software
Lack
Projects
Causes
Gone
Awry

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Conceptual integrity is the most important consideration in system design.
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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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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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I am more convinced than ever. Conceptual integrity is central to product quality.
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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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Even the best planning is not so omniscient as to get it right the first time.
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Predictability and great design are not friends.
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Systematically identity top designers as early as possible. The best are often not the most experienced.
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Plan to throw one (implementation) away you will, anyhow.
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Design work doesn't just satisfy requirements, it elicits them.
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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.
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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.
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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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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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The bearing of a child takes nine months, no matter how many women are assigned.
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System debugging, like astronomy, has always been done chiefly at night.
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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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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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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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Originality is no excuse for ignorance.
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