Quotes About Software

Early in my career as an engineer, I'd learned that all decisions were objective until the first line of code was written. After that, all decisions were emotional.

There's an entire flight simulator hidden in every copy of Microsoft Excel 97.

Testing proves a programmer's failure. Debugging is the programmer's vindication.

The proper use of comments is to compensate for our failure to express ourself in code.

The days when a car aficionado could repair his or her own car are long past, due primarily to the high software content.

Today's leading real-world retailer, Wal-Mart, uses software to power its logistics and distribution capabilities, which it has used to crush its competition.

Health care and education, in my view, are next up for fundamental software-based transformation.

Our differentiators were ease of use, a business model of shared risk, and low-risk commitment—everything that software was not.

The diagnostics and modifications screens. Ugly and utilitarian, just like they have been since the very beginnings of visual user interface. They were beautiful.

I'm not a heroic hacker with magic code. I was a brain in a box. But I am a programmer. Or was. And I knew the system. I knew the software. And I had a plan. And a little bit of time before anyone was going to bother me again. So I got to work.

Modifying the shuttle flight software to take the human presence out of the equation would not only require a substantial amount of time, but would also technically be classified as treason. Wilson preferred not to engage in treason if he could avoid it.

This was the power of Andrew Carnegie's legacy. He had used his wealth to set up over 2,000 public libraries across North America. Three generations after his death, they were continuing to pay dividends. These new American citizens were fortunate that Carnegie had thought long-term. For the Taiwanese boys, Carnegie had created the hardware, and their mother the software. This bode well for their assimilation and success in America.

Writing system software is like planning a family.If you make a mistake you have to live with it for 20 years.

In the free/libre software movement, we develop software that respects users' freedom, so we and you can escape from software that doesn't.

To be able to choose between proprietary software packages is to be able to choose your master. Freedom means not having a master.

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

Copy and paste is a design error.

Typinator, Typeit4me, or ActiveWords can type the current date on command. (Bit levers are covered in the "other essentials

for calls iter, which calls __iter__

In Python, practicality often beats aesthetics.

The problem here is a very general one: anytime you copy code with cut and paste, you essentially double your maintenance effort in the future.

By coding functions and classes in module files, we've ensured that they naturally support reuse. And by coding our software as classes, we've ensured that it naturally supports extension.

When people write software, they are not writing it for themselves. In fact, they are not even writing primarily for the computer. Rather, good programmers know that code is written for the next human being who has to read it in order to maintain or reuse it. If that person cannot understand the code, it's all but useless in a realistic development scenario.

In a sense, a module is like a single-instance class, without inheritance, which corresponds to an entire file of code.