Carolina QuotesThe 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.
Fred Brooks Carolinian
Source
Page 116 (italics in source).
- work
- The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering (1975, 1995)
- year
- 1975
Cite this record
“The management question, therefore, is not whether to build …” Fred Brooks. Carolina Quotes, record CQ-45E47EDF84. https://carolinaquotes.com/quote/45e47edf84
More from Fred Brooks
The essence of a software entity is a construct of interlocking concepts: […] I believe the hard part of building software to be the specification, design, and testing of this conceptual construct, not the labor of representing it and testing the fidelity of the representation.
The complexity of software is an essential property, not an accidental one. Hence, descriptions of a software entity that abstract away its complexity often abstracts away its essence.
Einstein repeatedly argued that there must be simplified explanations of nature, because God is not capricious or arbitrary. No such faith comforts the software engineer. Much of the complexity he must master is arbitrary complexity […] because they were designed by different people, rather than by God.