Quotes on Software

Software is largely a service industry operating under the persistent but unfounded delusion that it is a manufacturing industry

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.

Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later

The burgeoning field of computer science has shifted our view of the physical world from that of a collection of interacting material particles to one of a seething network of information. In this way of looking at nature, the laws of physics are a form of software, or algorithm, while the material world-the hardware-plays the role of a gigantic computer.

You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time.

Whether it's Google or Apple or free software, we've got some fantastic competitors and it keeps us on our toes.

A great lathe operator commands several times the wage of an average lathe operator, but a great writer of software code is worth 10,000 times the price of an average software writer.

Paul and I, we never thought that we would make much money out of the thing. We just loved writing software.

We're responsible for the creation of the PC industry. The whole idea of compatible machines and lots of software - that's something we brought to computing. And so it's a responsibility for us to make sure that things like security don't get in the way of that dream.

Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it.

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.

The engineering is long gone in most PC companies. In the consumer electronics companies, they don't understand the software parts of it. And so you really can't make the products that you can make at Apple anywhere else right now. Apple's the only company that has everything under one roof.

Computers themselves, and software yet to be developed, will revolutionize the way we learn.

DNA is like a computer program but far, far more advanced than any software ever created.