Computer Quotes

Controlling complexity is the essence of computer programming.

-- p.319, "Software Tools"

 

If our basic tool, the language in which we design and code our programs, is also complicated, the language itself becomes part of the problem rather than part of its solution.

-- C.A.T Hoare, Turing Award Lecture

 

I conclude that there are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies.
-- C. A. T Hoare, Turing Award Lecture

 

A distributed system is one in which the failure of a computer you didn't even know existed can render your own computer unusable.

-- Leslie Lamport

 

The important thing is to start with a good design.  It is much easier to relax the standards for something well written than it is to tighten them for something badly written.

-- p.257, "Software Tools"

 

Our rule is always: Write something clean and acceptable that works, then polish it later if necessary.

-- p.265, "Software Tools"

 

But we try to avoid such solutions, convenient as they may at first appear, because they violate a basic principle of top-down design: every function should return to where it is called.  This way, strategy is kept visible (and changeable) at the highest level of the code, and execution proceeds strictly from top to bottom.

-- p.47, "Software Tools" 

 

The value of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users of the system (n²).

-- Metcalfe's law

 

Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.

-- Eric Steven Raymond puts it as "Linus' Law"

 

Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence.

-- Dijkstra