Frederick P. Brooks, Jr.

“Show me your flowchart and conceal your tables, and I shall continue to be mystified. Show me your tables, and I won't usually need your flowchart; it'll be obvious.”

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

“Plan to throw one away; you will, anyhow.”

“There is no single development, in either technology or management technique, which by itself promises even one order-of-magnitude improvement within a decade in productivity, in reliability, in simplicity.”

“The complexity of software is an essential property, not an accidental one.”

“Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.”

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

“How does a project get to be a year late? One day at a time.”

“The manual, or specification, is the external specification of the product. It describes and prescribes every detail of what the user sees.”

“Einstein argued that there must be simplified explanations of nature, because God is not capricious or arbitrary. No such faith comforts the software engineer.”

“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 of the imagination.”

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

“Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment.”

“The manager's function is not to make people work, but to make it possible for people to work.”