Software, Architecture and Design Quotes

low angle photo of assorted book on bookshelf by Joshua Coleman

Tuesday 29 October 2024 • 📚 6 min read • back to Blog • edit on Github

These are some of the quotes that I found interesting, related to software, software architecture and software design.

Have a good read 🙂.

All my life I've had one dream, to achieve my many goals.

― Homer Simpson

Nothing is more dangerous than an idea when it is the only one you have.

― Emile Chartier Alain

Defer the actual decision until a decision can be made more responsibly, based on actual knowledge, but not so late that it is not possible to take advantage of the knowledge.

― Richard Monson-Haefel

You don‘t drive the architecture, the requirements do. You do your best to serve their needs.

― Richard Monson-Haefel

How do you make two systems loosely coupled? Don't connect them.

― David Orchard

Great architects are like great chefs: it's not just about selecting ingredients; it's how you put them together.

― Gregor Hohpe

When you think about your system, don't think about your technology choice. Make sure you think about it in the desirable properties you want your system to have. And then the technology choice is just the incarnation of that.

― Gregor Hohpe

Data is a precious thing and will last longer than the systems themselves.

― Tim Berners-Lee

Deleting dead code is not a technical problem; it is a problem of mindset and culture.

― Kevlin Henney

Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.

― Fred Brooks

Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.

― Cyril Northcote Parkinson

Be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others.

― Jon Postel

The connections between modules are the assumptions which the modules make about each other.

― David Parnas

Make it work, make it right, make it fast.

― Kent Beck

Testing is not the point. The point is about responsibility.

― Kent Beck

Sometimes the problem has to mature before the solution can mature.

― Kent Beck

If testing costs more than not testing, then don't test.

― Kent Beck

An antipattern is just like a pattern, except that instead of a solution it gives something that looks superficially like a solution but isn't one.

― Andrew Koenig

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

― Edsger W. Dijkstra

Simplicity is a great virtue but it requires hard work to achieve it and education to appreciate it. And to make matters worse: complexity sells better.

― Edsger W. Dijkstra

Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability.

― Edsger W. Dijkstra

If debugging is the process of removing software bugs, then programming must be the process of putting them in.

― Edsger W. Dijkstra

and one for the balance 😉

I don't know how many of you have ever met Dijkstra, but you probably know that arrogance in computer science is measured in nano-Dijkstras.

― Alan Kay

A change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points.

― Alan Kay

No matter what they tell you, it's always a people problem.

― Gerald Weinberg

A system is never finished being developed until it ceases to be used.

― Gerald Weinberg

The best way to get the right answer on the Internet is not to ask a question, it's to post the wrong answer.

― Ward Cunningham

What's the simplest thing that could possibly work?

― Ward Cunningham

Simple, not easy. There's a difference.

― Ron Jeffries

If there's only one answer, then this must not be a very interesting topic.

― Ron Jeffries

To change the architecture of a software-intensive system ensconced in a large organization, you often have to change the architecture of the organization. And ultimately, that is a political problem, not just a technical one.

― Grady Booch

All architecture is design, but not all design is architecture. Architecture represents the set of significant design decisions that shape the form and the function of a system, where significant is measured by cost of change.

― Grady Booch

The amateur software engineer is always in search of magic.

― Grady Booch

Hierarchy is a kind of order of abstractions.

― Grady Booch

Architectural decisions are design decisions that are hard to make or costly to change.

― Olaf Zimmermann

All architectures become iterative because of unknown unknowns, Agile just recognizes this and does it sooner.

― Mark Richards

I've learned to always avoid saying "always".

― Martin Fowler

Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.

― Martin Fowler

So I hope I’ve made clear that imposing agile methods is a very red flag.

― Martin Fowler

I would rather have questions that can't be answered than answers that can't be questioned.

― Richard Feynman

I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something.

― Richard P. Feynman

Religion is a culture of faith; science is a culture of doubt.

― Richard P. Feynman

Stupidity is knowing the truth, seeing the truth but still believing the lies. And that is more infectious than any other disease.

― Richard P. Feynman

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.

― Richard P. Feynman

There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation and naming things.

― Phil Karlton