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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.

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
Creativity
Desktop
Writer
Spacious
Known
Programmer
Strong
Programmers
Running
Fits
Floor
Abandon
Fit

More quotes by Fred Brooks

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Systematically identity top designers as early as possible. The best are often not the most experienced.
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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.
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Even the best planning is not so omniscient as to get it right the first time.
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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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The bearing of a child takes nine months, no matter how many women are assigned.
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Conceptual integrity is the most important consideration in system design.
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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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Predictability and great design are not friends.
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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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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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Adjusting to the requirement for perfection is, I think, the most difficult part of learning to program.
Fred Brooks
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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.
Fred Brooks
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The programmer, like the poet, works only slightly removed from pure thought-stuff. He builds his castles in the air, from air, creating by exertion of the imagination. Few media of creation are so flexible, so easy to polish and rework, so readily capable of realizing grand conceptual structures.
Fred Brooks
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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.
Fred Brooks
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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
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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
Fred Brooks
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Successful software always gets changed.
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.
Fred Brooks
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I am more convinced than ever. Conceptual integrity is central to product quality.
Fred Brooks
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System debugging, like astronomy, has always been done chiefly at night.
Fred Brooks