Nine people can't make a baby in a month.

...when fits of creativity run strong, more than one programmer or writer has been known to abandon the desktop for the more spacious floor.

The fundamental problem with program maintenance is that fixing a defect has a substantial (20-50 percent) chance of introducing another. So the whole process is two steps forward and one step back.

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.

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

Design work doesn't just satisfy requirements, it elicits them.

The hardest single part of building a software system is deciding precisely what to build.