Yet Another 10 IT Quotes From The Wise
A further 10 quotes with commentary.
Books
“After a day spent staring at a computer monitor, think of (a) book as a kind of screen saver for your brain”
[Dave Barry, American comedian]
Probably better to think of TV as a screen saver for your brain, a book as wallpaper and a Kindle as yet another goddam computer.
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Programmer Productivity
Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.
[Fred Brooks, Author of The Mythical Man Month]
The Mythical Man Month is perhaps the most important book written on software projects, having been written long ago in 1975 when the nature of software projects was less well known. It has been roundly ignored, of course, even though it is still in print.
The main point it makes is that adding manpower to a software project has a similar effect to adding manpower to the writing of a novel. It slows it down. Programmers are like SAS soldiers—they work best in teams of four or so. Project success thus depends most on the ability of the Project Manager and Project Architect to break the workload up into tasks that can be addressed by teams of four—assuming they know to do this. But usually they don’t.
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Windows Security
Every operating system out there is about equal… We all suck.
[Brian Valentine, Microsoft SVP, telling an enormous lie about Microsoft Windows security]
As regards veracity, this announcement could be compared to the proclamations of imminent victory made in the early days of the second Gulf War by Comical Ali, the Iraqi Information Minister. This quote was made in times when Windows awful lack of security features had just started to become a problem for Microsoft. Years later Microsoft is still floundering with Windows security.
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Smart Phone Usability
There’s an old story about the person who wished his computer were as easy to use as his telephone. That wish has come true, since I no longer know how to use my telephone.
[Bjarne Stroustrup]
That’s rich; complaints about smartphone usability from the man who invented C++, the world’s first write-only language. Pot, kettle. Kettle, pot.
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And It Came To Pass
The future lies in designing and selling computers that people don’t realize are computers at all”
[Adam Osborne, early PC entrepreneur]
Brilliantly predicted Adam. It happened. The first one was called the iPod.
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