“The price of reliability is the pursuit of the utmost simplicity.”
Tony Hoare
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
“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“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“Here is a language so far ahead of its time that it was not only an improvement on its predecessors but also on nearly all its successors.”
— Tony Hoare Primary source“In all spheres of human intellectual and practical activity, from carpentry to golf, from sculpture to space travel, the true craftsman is the one who thoroughly understands his tools.”
— 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“Just as animals flourish in niches, people who specialize in the business world—and get very good because they specialize—frequently find good economics that they wouldn’t get any other way.”
— Charlie Munger Primary source“All this will not be finished in the first one hundred days. Nor will it be finished in the first one thousand days, nor in the life of this Administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin.”
— John F. Kennedy Primary sourceSoftware Design Simplicity Reliability