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I am more convinced than ever. Conceptual integrity is central to product quality.

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
Quality
Ever
Conceptual
Central
Product
Convinced
Integrity
Products

More quotes by Fred Brooks

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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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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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Systematically identity top designers as early as possible. The best are often not the most experienced.
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Nine people can't make a baby in a month.
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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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Predictability and great design are not friends.
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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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Plan to throw one (implementation) away you will, anyhow.
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Conceptual integrity is the most important consideration in system design.
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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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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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Improving your process won't move you from good to great design. It'll move you from bad to average.
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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.
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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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Originality is no excuse for ignorance.
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System debugging, like astronomy, has always been done chiefly at night.
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The bearing of a child takes nine months, no matter how many women are assigned.
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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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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 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