Indeed, the cost-performance ratio of the product will depend most heavily on the implementer, just as ease of use depends most heavily on the architect.
Even at a cost of $100,000, a purchased piece of software is costing only about as much as one programmer-year. And delivery is immediate! Immediate at least for products that really exist, products w...
Digital computers are themselves more complex than most things people build; they have very large numbers of states. This makes conceiving, describing, and testing them hard. Software systems have ord...
By the architecture of a system, I mean the complete and detailed specification of the user interface. For a computer this is the programming manual. For a compiler it is the language manual. For a co...
Any product that is sufficiently big or urgent to require the effort of many minds thus encounters a peculiar difficulty: the result must be conceptually coherent to the single mind of the user and at...
The programmed computer has all the fascination of the pinball machine or the jukebox mechanism, carried to the ultimate. Fourth
The metaprogrammer who uses one, or especially several, applications as components in a larger system. This is the user whose needs are poorly met today. This is also the use which promises substantia...
The large organization will consist of many semi-autonomous units, which we may call quasi-firms. Each of them will have a large amount of freedom, to give the greatest possible chance to creativity a...
The fundamental problem with program maintenance is that fixing a defect has a substantial (20–50 percent) chance of introducing another. So the whole process is two steps forward and one step back.
The brain alone is intricate beyond mapping, powerful beyond imitation, rich in diversity, self-protecting, and self-renewing. The secret is that it is grown, not built. So it must be with our softwar...
The big change has been in the hardware/software cost ratio. The buyer of a $2-million machine in 1960 felt that he could afford $250,000 more for a customized payroll program, one that slipped easily...
Study after study shows that the very best designers produce structures that are faster, smaller, simpler, cleaner, and produced with less effort. The differences between the great and the average app...
Structuring an organization for change is much harder than designing a system for change. Each man must be assigned to jobs that broaden him, so that the whole force is technically flexible.
Reducing the role conflict. The boss must first distinguish between action information and status information. He must discipline himself not to act on problems his managers can solve, and never to ac...
Radically better software robustness and productivity are to be had only by moving up a level, and making programs by the composition of modules, or objects. An especially promising trend is the use o...
Now I do not think software managers have less inherent courage and firmness than chefs, nor than other engineering managers. But false scheduling to match the patron's desired date is much more commo...
First, one must perform perfectly. The computer resembles the magic of legend in this respect, too. If one character, one pause, of the incantation is not strictly in proper form, the magic doesn't wo...