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

The brain alone is intricate beyond mapping, powerful beyond imitation, rich in diversity, self-protecting, and self-renewing. The secret is that it is grown, not built.

It is very difficult to make a vigorous, plausible, and job-risking defense of an estimate that is derived by no quantitative method, supported by little data, and certified chiefly by the hunches of the managers

System debugging has always been a graveyard-shift occupation, like astronomy.

The hardest single part of building a software system is deciding precisely what to build the most important function that software builders do for their clients is the iterative extraction and refinement of the product requirements. For the truth is, the clients do not know what they want. They usually do not know what questions must be answered, and they have almost never thought of the problem in the detail that must be specified.

Systematically identity top designers as early as possible. The best are often not the most experienced.

A little retrospection shows that although many fine, useful software systems have been designed by committees and built as part of multipart projects, those software systems that have excited passionate fans are those that are the products of one or a few designing minds, great designers.