86 Quotes About Software

Software testing is not only ensuring absence of bugs but also ensuring presence of value.

We are threatened not just by memory loss, but by the routing of the synapses by the filterable viruses of memory. The strange disappearance of names, faces and places seems like a programmed erasure, like the imperceptible advance of a virus which, after infecting the artificial memories of computers, is now attacking natural memories. Might there not be a conspiracy of software?

Clean code always looks like it was written by someone who cares

So the syntax of the regular-expression language is awful; there are various incompatible forms of the language; and the quotation conventions are baroquen [sic]. While regular expression languages are domain-specific languages, they are bad ones. Part of the value of examining regular expressions is to experience how bad things can be.

The Joel Test1. Do you use source control?2. Can you make a build in one step?3. Do you make daily builds?4. Do you have a bug database?5. Do you fix bugs before writing new code?6. Do you have an up-to-date schedule?7. Do you have a spec?8. Do programmers have quiet working conditions?9. Do you use the best tools money can buy?10. Do you have testers?11. Do new candidates write code during their interview?12. Do you do hallway usability testing?

In general, the longer you wait before fixing a bug, the costlier (in time and money) it is to fix.

Programmers and software engineers who dive into code without writing a spec tend to think they're cool gunslingers, shooting from the hip. They're not. They are terribly unproductive. They write bad code and produce shoddy software, and they threaten their projects by taking giant risks which are completely uncalled for.

The confidence you get from knowing about every crash, anywhere in the world, is crucial to delivering a high-quality product that needs to be used in the wild. In the consumer software business, you can't rely on your customers to tell you about crashes—many of them may not be technical enough, and most of them won't bother to take time off of their own important work to give you a useful crash report unless you make it completely automatic.

Programming is a social activity.