Adam Barr > Quotes

“In other words, these methodologies don’t change the fact that software engineers are bad at estimating; they just keep the estimates short, so that even a significant slip, in percentage terms, is not that bad”
― Adam Barr, The Problem with Software: Why Smart Engineers Write Bad Code

“We live in countries where you need a license to cut hair, but you don’t need anything to write code for safety critical software or other mission critical software.”
― Adam Barr, The Problem with Software: Why Smart Engineers Write Bad Code

“when software first became a product that could be sold to customers, it was hardware companies that were writing the software; there were no “software-only” companies like Microsoft was in its early days.”
― Adam Barr, The Problem with Software: Why Smart Engineers Write Bad Code

“There is no single development, in either technology or management technique, which by itself promises even one order of magnitude improvement in productivity, in reliability, in simplicity. … Not only are there no silver bullets now in view, the very nature of software makes it unlikely that there will be any.”
― Adam Barr, The Problem with Software: Why Smart Engineers Write Bad Code

“If you’ve heard about the software industry, it might be because of the unusual way in which programmers are interviewed.”
― Adam Barr, The Problem with Software: Why Smart Engineers Write Bad Code

“Thompson, who designed and implemented the first UNIX system, has stated that he much prefers printf debugging.24 But as Baird put it, “If you are a genius like Ken Thompson, you are going to write good code.”25 The rest of us need to move beyond printf debugging to get our code working, as I rapidly discovered once I started working on the internals of Windows NT at Microsoft (the fundamental skill is learning to use a specialized piece of software called a debugger, which can examine the memory of another program).”
― Adam Barr, The Problem with Software: Why Smart Engineers Write Bad Code