Quotes about design
Posted by Avadhut on 11 September 2007
A few days ago, I came across a collection of design-related quotes over at sysprog.net. Below, a couple of my favorites:
In the beginning we must simplify the subject, thus unavoidably falsifying it, and later we must sophisticate away the falsely simple beginning.
-Maimonides
Walking on water and developing software from a specification are easy if both are frozen.
-Edward V Berard
You can only put as much intelligence in a system as was in the design engineer to begin with.
-Peter Orme
When one has no character, one has to apply a method.
-Albert Camus
A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others.
-Ayn Rand
Man has such a predilection for systems and abstract deductions that he is ready to distort the truth intentionally, he is ready to deny the evidence of his senses only to justify his logic.
-Fyodor Dostoevsky
If you cannot grok the overall structure of a program while taking a shower, you are not ready to code it.
-Richard Pattis
Designers must do two seemingly contradictory things at the same time: They must design for perfection, and they must design as though errors are inevitable. And they must do the second without compromising the first.
-Bob Colwell
The two main design principles of the NeXT machine appear to be revenge and spite.
-Don Lancaster
Very often, people confuse simple with simplistic. The nuance is lost on most.
-Clement Mok
It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious.
-Alfred North Whitehead
Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory.
-Leonardo da Vinci
Much of the Web is like an anthill built by ants on LSD.
-Jakob Nielsen
Form follows function – that has been misunderstood. Form and function should be one, joined in a spiritual union.
-Frank Lloyd Wright
Quality isn’t something you lay on top of subjects and objects like tinsel on a Christmas tree.
-Robert Pirsig
Crash programs fail because they are based on the theory that with nine women pregnant, you can get a baby a month.
-Wernher von Braun
Out of intense complexities, emerge intense simplicities.
-Winston Churchill
Pink Imp said
ok. i will comment on this in a while once i am through cleaning this dirty data file. meanwhile, in a couple of hours, i will get steve, the prodigy of our lab, to comment.
Ergo said
… thus comments Pink Imp.
Anyway, a very interesting set of quotes. I like “You can only put as much intelligence in a system as was in the design engineer to begin with.” Nice parallel with the intelligent design argument.
seemajoshi said
The one i liked the best
“Walking on water and developing software from a specification are easy if both are frozen.”
-Edward V Berard
(Ultimate truth)
xhydra said
“I want to change the world, but they won’t give me the source-code” : unknown
Heartburn Home Remedy said
The style of writing is very familiar to me. Did you write guest posts for other bloggers?