79 Quotes by Fred Brooks

One can expect the human race to continue attempting systems just within or just beyond our reach; and software systems are perhaps the most intricate and complex of man's handiworks. The management of this complex craft will demand our best use of new languages and systems, our best adaptation of proven engineering management methods, liberal doses of common sense, and a God-given humility to recognize our fallibility and limitations.

Conceptual integrity is the most important consideration in system design.

The management question, therefore, is not whether to build a pilot system and throw it away. You will do that. Hence plan to throw one away; you will, anyhow.

The Waterfall Model is wrong and harmful; we must outgrow it.

I am more convinced than ever. Conceptual integrity is central to product quality.

The programmer, like the poet, works only slightly removed from pure thought-stuff. He builds his castles in the air, from air, creating by exertion of the imagination. Few media of creation are so flexible, so easy to polish and rework, so readily capable of realizing grand conceptual structures.

Mediocre design provably wastes the world's resources, corrupts the environment, affects international competitiveness. Design is important.

The bearing of a child takes nine months, no matter how many women are assigned.

To only a fraction of the human race does God give the privilege of earning one's bread doing what one would have gladly pursued free, for passion.