Famous IT Quotes

Michael C. Feathers - Code without tests is bad code

Code without tests is bad code. It doesn't matter how well written it is; it doesn't matter how pretty or object-oriented or well-encapsulated it is. With tests, we can change the behavior of our code quickly and verifiably. Without them, we really don't know if our code is getting better or worse.

― Michael C. Feathers, Working Effectively with Legacy Code

Michael C. Feathers - Legacy code is simply code without tests

To me, legacy code is simply code without tests

― Michael C. Feathers, Working Effectively with Legacy Code

Uncle Bob - Personal Responsibility

The single most important trait of a professional programmer is personal responsibility.

― Uncle Bob, The Professional Programmer

Uncle Bob - Readability of code

“Indeed, the ratio of time spent reading versus writing is well over 10 to 1. We are constantly reading old code as part of the effort to write new code. ...[Therefore,] making it easy to read makes it easier to write.”

― Uncle Bob, Clean Code (→goodreads)

Alan Kay - Predict the future

The best way to predict the future is to invent it.

― Alan Kay

Peter Seibel - 10x engineer

How to be a 10x engineer: help ten other engineers be twice as good.

― Peter Seibel (→Tweet)

Martin Fowler - Write code that humans can understand

Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.

— Martin Fowler

Peter Drucker - Can't measure, can't improve

"If you can't measure it, you can't improve it."

— Peter Drucker

Edsger Wybe Dijkstra - Simplicity

Simplicity is a great virtue but it requires hard work to achieve it and education to appreciate it. And to make matters worse: complexity sells better

— Edsger W. Dij – On the nature of Computing Science (1984)

Conway's Law

Any organization that designs a system (defined broadly) will produce a design whose structure is a copy of the organization's communication structure.

― Melvin Conway, 1968

Leslie Lamport - Distributed System

A distributed system is one in which the failure of a computer you didn't even know existed can render your own computer unusable.

— Leslie Lamport

All models are wrong

All models are wrong, but some are useful.

― George E. Box

Phil Karlton - Two hard things: cache invalidation and naming

There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation and naming things.

— Phil Karlton