The Emperor’s Old Clothes (Primary source)
Tony Hoare’s brilliant Turing Award lecture where he reflects on software design and the importance of simplicity and elegance in programming.
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“At first I hoped that such a technically unsound project would collapse but I soon realized it was doomed to success. Almost anything in software can be implemented, sold, and even used given enough determination. There is nothing a mere scientist can say that will stand against the flood of a hundred million dollars. But there is one quality that cannot be purchased in this way - and that is reliability. The price of reliability is the pursuit of the utmost simplicity. It is a price which the very rich find most hard to pay.”
Tony Hoare
“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 Primary source“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 Primary source“In all branches of commerce and industry, history shows dramatic reduction in the error rates when their cost is brought back from the customer to the perpetrator.”
— Tony Hoare Primary source“I call it my billion-dollar mistake. It was the invention of the null reference in 1965.”
— Tony Hoare Primary source“If a man has failed, you will find he has dreamed instead of working. There is no way to success in our art, but to take off your coat, grind paint, and work like a digger on the railroad, all day and every day.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“Nothing augments a battalion like success.”
— Napoleon Bonaparte Disputed“We can do anything we want as long as we stick to it long enough.”
— Helen Keller Disputed“I think track records are very important, If you start early trying to have a perfect one in some simple thing like honesty, you’re well on your way to success in this world.”
— Charlie Munger Primary sourceSoftware Design Simplicity Reliability