Carolina QuotesEven perfect program verification can only establish that a program meets its specification. […] Much of the essence of building a program is in fact the debugging of the specification.
Fred Brooks Carolinian
Source
Page 195.
- work
- No Silver Bullet (1986)
- year
- 1986
Cite this record
“Even perfect program verification can only establish that a …” Fred Brooks. Carolina Quotes, record CQ-E5ABFF8A48. https://carolinaquotes.com/quote/e5abff8a48
More from Fred Brooks
Some people have called the book the "bible of software engineering". I would agree with that in one respect: that is, everybody quotes it, some people read it, and a few people go by it.
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.
Show me your flowcharts and conceal your tables, and I shall continue to be mystified. Show me your tables, and I won’t usually need your flowcharts; they’ll be obvious.