Quotes on Software Design

Increasingly, people seem to misinterpret complexity as sophistication, which is baffling -- the incomprehensible should cause suspicion rather than admiration.

Simple things should be simple and complex things should be possible.

If we want users to like our software we should design it to behave like a likeable person: respectful, generous and helpful.

The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.

It is poor civic hygiene to install technologies that could someday facilitate a police state.

The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.

...it is simplicity that is difficult to make.

... as a slow-witted human being I have a very small head and I had better learn to live with it and to respect my limitations and give them full credit, rather than to try to ignore them, for the latter vain effort will be punished by failure.

Simplicity and elegance are unpopular because they require hard work and discipline to achieve and education to be appreciated.

The hardest part of design ... is keeping features out.

The most important single aspect of software development is to be clear about what you are trying to build.

The cost of adding a feature isn't just the time it takes to code it. The cost also includes the addition of an obstacle to future expansion. ... The trick is to pick the features that don't fight each other.

Luck is the residue of design.

Measuring programming progress by lines of code is like measuring aircraft building progress by weight.

Most software today is very much like an Egyptian pyramid with millions of bricks piled on top of each other, with no structural integrity, but just done by brute force and thousands of slaves.

Talk is cheap. Show me the code.

Out of intense complexities, intense simplicities emerge