Successful software always gets changed..

Predictability and great design are not friends..

The critical thing about the design process is to identify your scarcest resource. Despite what you may think, that very often is not money. For exam….

Even the best planning is not so omniscient as to get it right the first time..

Well over half of the time you spend working on a project (on the order of 70 percent) is spent thinking, and no tool, no matter how advanced, can th….

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….

The programmer, like the poet, works only slightly removed from pure thought-stuff. He builds his castles in the air, from air, creating by exertion ….

The fundamental problem with program maintenance is that fixing a defect has a substantial (20-50 percent) chance of introducing another. So the whol….

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

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

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

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

A scientist builds in order to learn; an engineer learns in order to build..

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

You can learn more from failure than success. In failure you're forced to find out what part did not work. But in success you can believe everything ….

Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.

Present to inform, not to impress. If you inform, you will impress..

An ancient adage warns, "Never go to sea with two chronometers; take one or three.".

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

Conceptual integrity is the most important consideration in system design..

All programmers are optimists. Perhaps this modern sorcery especially attracts those who believe in happy endings and fairy godmothers. Perhaps the h….