Software Design Quotes

The unavoidable price of reliability is simplicity. ~ Tony Hoare

Software will give you respect, but hardware will give you the Power. ~ Akshat Paul

Simple things should be simple and complex things should be possible. ~ Alan Kay

Systems programmers are the high priests of a low cult. ~ Bob Barton

Design and programming are human activities; forget that and all is lost. ~ Bjarne Stroustrup

A charlatan makes obscure what is clear; a thinker makes clear what is obscure. ~ Hugh Kingsmill

An organization that treats its programmers as morons will soon have programmers that are willing and able to act like morons only. ~ Bjarne Stroustrup

As a slow-witted human being I have a very small head and I had better learn to live with it and to respect my limitations and give them full credit, rather than to try to ignore them, for the latter vain effort will be punished by failure. ~ Edsger Dijkstra

Technical skill is mastery of complexity, while creativity is mastery of simplicity. ~ Christopher Zeeman

A Wired reader told me once, Get a life, which I read from the back of a yacht in the Aegean, while eating fresh sea urchins and drinking terrific Montrachet. ~ Nicholas Negroponte

The tragedy of our time is that we've got it backwards, we've learned to love techniques and use people. ~ Herb Kelleher

The problem is, in software design, often the consequences of your decisions don't become apparent for years. ~ Kent Beck

I have found that meditation has helped me with my academic career and has given me insights into musical composition and software design. ~ Frederick Lenz

Software design as taught today is terribly incomplete. It talks only about what systems should do. It doesn't address the converse - things systems should not do. They should not crash, hang, lose data, violate privacy, lose money, destroy your company, or kill your customers. ~ Michael T. Nygard

Talk is cheap. Show me the code. ~ Linus Torvalds

We don't think of ourselves as being perfectionists, really. To us it's more about desperately trying to have it sound more or less OK. ~ Donald Fagen

You think you KNOW when you learn, are more sure when you can write, even more when you can teach, but certain when you can program. ~ Alan Perlis

The future belongs to neither the conduit or content players, but those who control the filtering, searching and sense-making tools we will rely on to navigate through the expanses of cyberspace. ~ Paul Saffo

Let me try to explain to you, what to my taste is characteristic for all intelligent thinking. It is, that one is willing to study in depth an aspect of one's subject matter in isolation for the sake of its own consistency, all the time knowing that one is occupying oneself only with one of the aspects. We know that a program must be correct and we can study it from that viewpoint only; we also know that it should be efficient and we can study its efficiency on another day, so to speak. In another mood we may ask ourselves whether, and if so: why, the program is desirable. But nothing is gained - on the contrary! - by tackling these various aspects simultaneously. It is what I sometimes have called "the separation of concerns", which, even if not perfectly possible, is yet the only available technique for effective ordering of one's thoughts, that I know of. This is what I mean by "focusing one's attention upon some aspect": it does not mean ignoring the other aspects, it is just doing justice to the fact that from this aspect's point of view, the other is irrelevant. It is being one- and multiple-track minded simultaneously. ~ Edsger W. Dijkstra

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.
The first method is far more difficult. It demands the same skill, devotion, insight, and even inspiration as the discovery of the simple physical laws which underlie the complex phenomena of nature. It also requires a willingness to accept objectives which are limited by physical, logical, and technological constraints, and to accept a compromise when conflicting objectives cannot be met. No committee will ever do this until it is too late. ~ C.A.R. Hoare

Find the simplest model that is not a lie is the key to better software design. ~ David Parnas

It's hard to read through a book on the principles of magic without glancing at the cover periodically to make sure it isn't a book on software design. ~ Bruce Tognazzini

Design Patterns - Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software ~ Erich Gamma

Programming is about managing complexity: the complexity of the problem, laid upon the complexity of the machine. Because of this complexity, most of our programming projects fail. ~ Bruce Eckel

To a database person, every nail looks like a thumb. Or something like that. ~ Jamie Zawinski

I no longer teach meditation, only software design. ~ Frederick Lenz

There is a lot of interest in the arts, music, theatre, filmmaking, engineering, architecture and software design. I think we have now transitioned the modern-day version of the entrepreneur into the creative economy. ~ John Baldacci

I conclude there are two ways of constructing software design: one way is to make it so simple there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. ~ Tony Hoare

With proper design, the features come cheaply. This approach is arduous, but continues to succeed. ~ Dennis Ritchie

Since when has the world of computer software design been about what people want? This is a simple question of evolution. The day is quickly coming when every knee will bow down to a silicon fist, and you will all beg your binary gods for mercy. ~ Bill Gates

Truth can only be found in one place: the code. ~ Robert C. Martin

Good work is always done in defiance of management. ~ Bob Woodward

Inspiration comes from the act of writing. ~ Steve Doll

User interface is the process of shifting from chaotic complexity to elegant simplicity. ~ Akshat Paul

The hardest part of design ... is keeping features out. ~ Donald A. Norman

Design can be both a manifestation of a company's design ethic and an outward communication of a company's design ethic and drive for excellence. ~ Bob Lutz

The real giants have always been poets, men who jumped from facts into the realm of imagination and ideas. ~ William Bernbach

My first job after college was at Magic Quest, an educational software startup company where I was responsible for writing the content. I found that job somewhat accidentally but after working there a few weeks and loving my job, I decided to pursue a career in technology. ~ Susan Wojcicki

To most Christians, the Bible is like a software license. Nobody actually reads it. They just scroll to the bottom and click 'I agree'. ~ Bill Maher

I like to be surrounded by books. My wife Evelyn has a Ph.D. in comparative literature, so we have a lot of her Spanish and German literature books which are wasted on me, plus a lot of novels and books on art and architecture shared by us both. Evelyn used to edit an art magazine called 'FMR,' so we have a common interest in design. ~ David Chipperfield

The purpose of diversification is so that when one investment goes down or is not doing well, you are insulated from the result because of the others you have in place. In a job or career, most of us are trying to specialize so much so that we've ended up with all of our eggs in the same basket. That's not managing risk at all. That's putting yourself at risk. - Chris Lutz ~ Chris Lutz

The man who is wantonly profuse of his promises ought to sink his credit as much as a tradesman would by uttering a great number of promissory notes payable at a distant day. The truest conclusion in both cases is, that neither intend or will be able to pay. And as the latter most probably intends to cheat you of your money, so the former at least designs to cheat you of your thanks. ~ Henry Fielding

Writers have come to master nearly every trade. They are inventors and entrepreneurs of character, plot, and dialogue. They are the eager scientists that can't wait to try out their new experiment. They are the maestros of the symphony that plays in their head, conducting what happens, where, and at what precise moment. They are engineers and architects that design the structure of their piece so it stands the test of time and continues to fire on all cylinders. They play mechanics and doctors in their revisions, hoping they prescribe the correct diagnosis to fix the piece's 'boo boos'. They are salesmen who pitch not an idea or a product, but themselves, to editors, publishers, and more importantly, their readers. They are teachers who through their craft, preach to pupils about what works and what doesn't work and why. Writers can make you feel, can make you think, can make you wonder, but they can also grab your hand and guide you through their maze. Similar to what Emerson stated in 'The Poet,' writers possess a unique view on life, and with their revolving eye, they attempt to encompass all. I am a writer. ~ Garrett Dennert

There are two bodies - the rudimental and the complete; corresponding with the two conditions of the worm and the butterfly. What we call "death," is but the painful metamorphosis. Our present incarnation is progressive, preparatory, temporary. Our future is perfected, ultimate, immortal. The ultimate life is the full design ~ Edgar Allan Poe

In architecture the idea degenerated. Design allows a more direct and pleasurable route. ~ Charles Eames

if this store of cosmic prana were inanimate, without a will and a direction of its own, we could very well flatter ourselves that every thought and fancy that we have is the product of our own volition. but since we are ourselves the products of this superintelligent cosmic power, it would be illogical to the last degree to presume that our individual ideas and fancies are exclusively our own creations and have no relationship to the ocean of which we are but a tiny drop. when it is once admitted that mind and consciousness are cosmic entities, it would then be ridiculous to suppose that the thoughts and ideas in an individual atom of this cosmic consciousness can have an entirely independent existence and not reflect the will and design of the cosmic whole. ~ Gopi Krishna

We speak of 'software eating the world,' 'the Internet of Things,' and we massify 'data' by declaring it 'Big.' But these concepts remain for the most part abstract. It's hard for many of us to grasp the impact of digital technology on the 'real world' of things like rocks, homes, cars, and trees. We lack a metaphor that hits home. ~ John Battelle

My well-beloved was stripped. Knowing my whim,
She wore her tinkling gems, but naught besides:
And showed such pride as, while her luck betides,
A sultan's favoured slave may show to him.

When it lets off its lively, crackling sound,
This blazing blend of metal crossed with stone,
Gives me an ecstasy I've only known
Where league of sound and luster can be found.

She let herself be loved: then, drowsy-eyed,
Smiled down from her high couch in languid ease.
My love was deep and gentle as the seas
And rose to her as to a cliff the tide.

My own approval of each dreamy pose,
Like a tamed tiger, cunningly she sighted:
And candour, with lubricity united,
Gave piquancy to every one she chose.

Her limbs and hips, burnished with changing lustres,
Before my eyes clairvoyant and serene,
Swanned themselves, undulating in their sheen;
Her breasts and belly, of my vine and clusters,

Like evil angels rose, my fancy twitting,
To kill the peace which over me she'd thrown,
And to disturb her from the crystal throne
Where, calm and solitary, she was sitting.

So swerved her pelvis that, in one design,
Antiope's white rump it seemed to graft
To a boy's torso, merging fore and aft.
The talc on her brown tan seemed half-divine.

The lamp resigned its dying flame. Within,
The hearth alone lit up the darkened air,
~ Charles Baudelaire

The definite link between all the women who wear my designs is that they are strong, independent, and with their own opinions. ~ Roksanda Ilincic

In my experience, requirements change quite often, or new situations will arise that weren't anticipated at the start of the project. If the situation can be addressed with a plugin, I just whip open the standalone plugin page, make the updates and pop the new plugin back in. Because the plugin is self-contained, it's easy to recreate the problem, fix it, and get it back into the codebase. ~ Robert Duchnik

A lot of people recoil from the word "drugs" - which is understandable given today's noxious street drugs and their uninspiring medical counterparts. Yet even academics and intellectuals in our society typically take the prototypical dumb drug, ethyl alcohol. If it's socially acceptable to take a drug that makes you temporarily happy and stupid, then why not rationally design drugs to make people perpetually happier and smarter? Presumably, in order to limit abuse-potential, one would want any ideal pleasure drug to be akin - in one limited but important sense - to nicotine, where the smoker's brain finely calibrates its optimal level: there is no uncontrolled dose-escalation. ~ David Pearce

Forty minutes later, I leaned back in my chair, and looked at the thousand or so pages of manuscript towering on my desk. It hit me. Holy cow. This author had total control over this book. Total. And it was one of seven. One. Of. Seven. ~ Carla Bolte

My sense of designing is a mix of intuition and intellectual control. ~ Olivier Theyskens

Great design should tell a story. ~ Sol Sender

But despite the maturity of the basic F4U design, the risks involved in flight-testing design changes remained. On 8 July 1946 test pilot Dick Burroughs was killed while attempting to land at the Tweed New Haven Airport following an engine failure in the XF4U-5. Later that year, project pilot Bill Horan survived a risky bail out of an F4U-5 following an engine failure during a high altitude dive test over Long Island Sound. ~ Ralph Harvey

Like any place in Reality, the Street is subject to development. Developers can
build their own small streets feeding off of the main one. They can build
buildings, parks, signs, as well as things that do not exist in Reality, such as
vast hovering overhead light shows, special neighborhoods where the rules of
three-dimensional spacetime are ignored, and free-combat zones where people can
go to hunt and kill each other.
The only difference is that since the Street does not really exist -- it's just
a computer-graphics protocol written down on a piece of paper somewhere -- none
of these things is being physically built. They are, rather, pieces of
software, made available to the public over the worldwide fiber-optics network.
When Hiro goes into the Metaverse and looks down the Street and sees buildings
and electric signs stretching off into the darkness, disappearing over the curve
of the globe, he is actually staring at the graphic representations -- the user
interfaces -- of a myriad different pieces of software that have been engineered
by major corporations. In order to place these things on the Street, they have
had to get approval from the Global Multimedia Protocol Group, have had to buy
frontage on the Street, get zoning approval, obtain permits, bribe inspectors,
the whole bit. The money these corporations pay to build things on the Street
all goes into a trust fund owned and op ~ Neal Stephenson

... no industrial designer worth his salt, or our attention, has been trained to work exclusively on any particular product, unless by accident. What he has been trained to do is practice a process called design, a process that includes esthetic choices but does not consist only of them. ~ Ralph Caplan

You are the only person on earth who can use your ability. ~ Zig Ziglar

Design is the fundamental creative activity with which we direct our lives, and collectively, the earth's transformation from its original, natural state into our human-made world. ~ Michael Shannon

There is a journey that's waiting for you, you will make great discoveries, you will find treasures and hidden powers, it's a journey divinely design just for you, Today be brave in self-love and start the journey within yourself, There God is waiting to show you his masterpiece of love. ~ Micheline Jean Louis

What is the "Once upon a time" of your brand story? Ask yourself this: "How does what I'm building help consumers close the gap between who they are today and who they want to be tomorrow? ~ Laura Busche

The Office's prime approach to architecture ... is one of continuous ANTICIPATORY DESIGN. ~ Cedric Price

Never design anything that cannot be made, ~ Jean Prouve

The more uninteresting the letter, the more useful it is to the typographer. ~ Piet Zwart

Design is something you have to put your hand to, ~ I.M. Pei

The clarity offered by software as metaphor - and the empowerment allegedly offered to us who know software - should make us pause, because software also engenders a sense of profound ignorance. Software is extremely difficult to comprehend. Who really knows what lurks behind our smiling interfaces, behind the objects we click and manipulate? Who completely understands what one's computer is actually doing at any given moment? Software as a metaphor for metaphor troubles the usual functioning of metaphor, that is, the clarification of an unknown concept through a known one. For, if software illuminates an unknown, it does so through an unknowable (software). This paradox - this drive to grasp what we do not know through what we do not entirely understand… does not undermine, but rather grounds software's appeal. Its combination of what can be seen and not seen, can be known and no known - it's separation of interface from algorithm, of software from hardware - makes it a powerful metaphor for everything we believe is invisible yet generates visible effects, from genetics to the invisible hand of the market, from ideology to culture. Every use entails an act of faith. ~ Wendy Hui Kyong Chun

You know," he said, "this design begins to appeal to me after all. Sea slugs aren't the least bit arousing, but logarithms . . . I've always thought that word sounded splendidly naughty." He let it roll off his tongue with ribald inflection. "Logarithm." He gave an exaggerated shiver. "Ooh. Yes and thank you and may I have some more."

"Lots of mathematical terms sound that way. I think it's because they were all coined by men. 'Hypotenuse' is downright lewd."

" 'Quadrilateral' brings rather carnal images to mind."

She was silent for a long time. Then one of her dark eyebrows arched. "Not so many as 'rhombus.' "

Good Lord. That word was wicked. Her pronunciation of it did rather wicked things to him. He had to admire the way she didn't shrink from a challenge, but came back with a new and surprising retort. One day, she'd make some fortunate man a very creative lover. ~ Tessa Dare

Your best work is your expression of yourself. Now, you may not be the greatest at it, but when you do it, you're the only expert. ~ Frank Gehry

The key utility measure is user happiness. Speed of response and the size of the index are factors in user happiness. It seems reasonable to assume that relevance of results is the most important factor: blindingly fast, useless answers do not make a user happy. However, user perceptions do not always coincide with system designers' notions of quality. For example, user happiness commonly depends very strongly on user interface design issues, including the layout, clarity, and responsiveness of the user interface, which are independent of the quality of the results returned. ~ Christopher D. Manning

We now know that something between 85 and 90 percent of most software product features are unwanted and unneeded by customers. That is an enourmous ammount of waste of time and money that ends up on the floor. ~ Steve Blank

To use a computer analogy, we are running twenty-first-century software on hardware last upgraded 50,000 years ago or more. This may explain quite a lot of what we see in the news. ~ Ronald Wright

The conscious principle in this design has been to achieve forms that could create experiences, and that could at the same time welcome everyone's experiences with the serenity of an effortless development. ~ Gae Aulenti

[Foucault's] criticism is not transcendental, and its goal is not that of making a metaphysics possible: it is genealogical in its design and archaeological in its method.

Archaeological –and not transcendental– in the sense that it will not seek to identify the universal structures of all knowledge or of all possible moral action, but will seek to treat the instances of discourse that articulate what we think, say, and do as so many historical events.

And this critique will be genealogical in the sense it will not deduce from the form of what we are what is impossible for us to do and to know; but it will separate out, from the contingency that has made us what we are, the possibility of no longer being, doing, or thinking what we are, do or think. It is not seeking to make possible a metaphysics that has finally become a science; it is seeking to give new impetus, as far and wide as possible, to the undefined work of freedom. ~ Paul Rabinow

The constructive intellect [genius] produces thoughts, sentences, poems, plans, designs, systems. It is the generation of the mind, the marriage of thought with nature. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

The fact is that if the writer's attention is on producing a work of art, a work that is good in itself, he is going to take great pains to control every excess, everything that does not contribute to this central meaning and design. He cannot indulge in sentimentality, in propagandizing, or in pornography and create a work of art, for all these things are excesses. They call attention to themselves and distract from the work as a whole. ~ Flannery O'Connor

Design truly is a contact sport. It demands that we bring all of our senses to the task, and that we apply the very best of our thinking, our feeling and our doing to the challenge that we have at hand. ~ Tom Wujec

I don't like the idea that the first preparation when you start to design your building has to put your label. I think this is not fair. It's not fair to the building or to the people, to the client, because every building tells a different story. ~ Renzo Piano

That order generated without design can far outstrip plans men consciously contrive ~ Friedrich August Von Hayek

Good restaurant design is about achieving equilibrium between the food, service, and design - in effect, telling a complete story. ~ David Rockwell

Design is one of the few disciplines that is a science as well as an art. Effective, meaningful design requires intellectual, rational rigor along with the ability to elicit emotions and beliefs. Thus, designers must balance both the logic and lyricism of humanity every time they design something, a task that requires a singularly mysterious skill. ~ Debbie Millman

My training as an engineer has enabled me to design the stuff, but the reason I do it is not to make music but for the opportunity to work with musicians. ~ Robert Moog

The danger of these collaborations across disciplines is in having too strict of a division of labor - in my case, of getting stuck doing the music. When I make an album, I write music, I write lyrics, I come up with the visual design, etc. I get to do all of that stuff. ~ David Grubbs