Fred Brooks Quotes

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

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

Conceptual integrity is the most important consideration in system design.

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

The essence of a software entity is a construct of interlocking concepts. I believe the hard part of building software to be the specification, design, and testing of this conceptual construct, not the labor of representing it and testing the fidelity of the representation.

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

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.

Observe that for the programmer, as for the chef, the urgency of the patron may govern the scheduled completion of the task, but it cannot govern the actual completion. An omelette, promised in two minutes, may appear to be progressing nicely. But when it has not set in two minutes, the customer has two choices – wait or eat it raw. Software customers have had the same choices.

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

Plan to throw one (implementation) away; you will, anyhow.

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.

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