I am more convinced than ever. Conceptual integrity is central to product quality.

But I will argue that knowing complete product requirements up front is a quite rare exception, not the norm.

A computer program is a message from a man to a machine. The rigidly marshaled syntax and the scrupulous definitions all exist to make intention clear to the dumb engine.

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.

Men and months are interchangeable commodities only when a task can be partitioned among many workers with no communication among them.

Originality is no excuse for ignorance.

System debugging, like astronomy, has always been done chiefly at night.