Walking on water and developing software from a specification are easy if both are frozen.
— Edward V. Berard, in Life-Cycle Approaches
Simple, clear purpose and principles give rise to complex, intelligent behavior. Complex rules and regulations give
rise to simple, stupid behavior.
— The Cutter Consortium
Agile vs. Rigorous Methods:
Documentation is not understanding (tacit)
Formality is not Discipline
Process is not Skill
— The Cutter Consortium
In an extreme environment, following a plan produces the product you intended, just not the product you need.
— The Cutter Consortium
Brilliance is typically the act of an individual, but incredible stupidity can usually be traced to an
organization.
— Jon Bentley
A popular Western writer once confessed that when he was paid by the word, the heroes in his books took six bullets
to die. When programmers are paid by the line of code, how do you suppose the array X[l . . 1OOO] is initialized to
zero? (Hint: programmers paid by the speedup initially produce very slow code, and programmers required to execute a
certain percentage of branches during testing have a lot of statements of the form if true then. . . 1)
— Jon Bentley