I have never seen an experienced programmer who routinely made detailed flow charts before beginning to write programs.

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

Software and hardware design is less different than software designers think, but more different than hardware designers think.

How does a project get to be a year behind schedule? One day at a time.

Adjusting to the requirement for perfection is, I think, the most difficult part of learning to program.

The bearing of a child takes nine months, no matter how many women are assigned.

The first step toward the management of disease was replacement of demon theories and humours theories by the germ theory. That very step, the beginning of hope, in itself dashed all hopes of magical solutions. It told workers that progress would be made stepwise, at great effort, and that a persistent, unremitting care would have to be paid to a discipline of cleanliness. So it is with software engineering today.