“A crude measure of the simplicity of an engineering tool is the length of the manual required to give a full and complete account of how to use it and avoid misusing it.”
Tony Hoare (verified)
Programming is an Engineering Profession (Primary source)
This paper argues that programming should evolve from a craft into a true engineering profession. Tony Hoare draws analogies between programmers and traditional craftsmen who are skilled but lack a strong theoretical foundation.
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“There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies.”
— Tony Hoare (verified)“The price of reliability is the pursuit of the utmost simplicity.”
— Tony Hoare (verified)“What is the central core of the subject [computer science]? What is it that distinguishes it from the separate subjects with which it is related? What is the linking thread which gathers these disparate branches into a single discipline? My answer to these questions is simple—it is the art of programming a computer.”
— Tony Hoare (verified)“I was eventually persuaded of the need to design programming notations so as to maximize the number of errors which cannot be made, or if made, can be reliably detected at compile time.”
— Tony Hoare (verified)“As we must account for every idle word, so we must for every idle silence.”
— Benjamin Franklin (verified)“The most important thing in any relationship is not what you get but what you give.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt (verified)“Nature is full of infinite causes that have never occured in experience.”
— Leonardo da Vinci (verified)“The best way to keep one’s word is not to give it.”
— Napoleon Bonaparte (verified, secondary source)