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System debugging, like astronomy, has always been done chiefly at night.

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
Chiefly
Astronomy
System
Night
Done
Always
Like
Debugging

More quotes by Fred Brooks

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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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Conceptual integrity is the most important consideration in system design.
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Originality is no excuse for ignorance.
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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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A scientist builds in order to learn an engineer learns in order to build.
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I am more convinced than ever. Conceptual integrity is central to product quality.
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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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Even the best planning is not so omniscient as to get it right the first time.
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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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Nine people can't make a baby in a month.
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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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The bearing of a child takes nine months, no matter how many women are assigned.
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Predictability and great design are not friends.
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The Waterfall Model is wrong and harmful we must outgrow it.
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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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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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A basic principle of data processing teaches the folly of trying to maintain independent files in synchonism.
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Plan to throw one (implementation) away you will, anyhow.
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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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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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