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“Architecture must be carefully distinguished from implementation. As Blaauw has said, "Where architecture tells what happens, implementation tells how it is made to happen.”
― The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering
― The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering
“An architect's first work is apt to be spare and clean. He knows he doesn't know what he's doing, so he does it carefully and with great restraint.”
― The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering
― The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering
“By the architecture of a system, I mean the complete and detailed specification of the user interface. For a computer this is the programming manual. For a compiler it is the language manual. For a control program it is the manuals for the language or languages used to invoke its functions. For the entire system it is the union of the manuals the user must consult to do his entire job. The architect of a system, like the architect of a building, is the user's agent. It is his job to bring professional and technical knowledge to bear in the unalloyed interest of the user, as opposed to the interests of the salesman, the fabricator, etc.[2] Architecture must be carefully distinguished from implementation. As Blaauw has said, "Where architecture tells what happens, implementation tells how it is made to happen."[3] He gives as a simple example a clock, whose architecture consists of the face, the hands, and the winding knob. When a child has learned this architecture, he can tell time as easily from a wristwatch as from a church tower. The implementation, however, and its realization, describe what goes on inside the case—powering by any of many mechanisms and accuracy control by any of many.”
― The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering
― The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering
“More software projects have gone awry for lack of calendar time than for all other causes combined.”
― The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering
― The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering
“Peopleware. A major contribution during recent years has been DeMarco and Lister's 1987 book, Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams. Its underlying thesis is that "The major problems of our work are not so much technological as sociological in nature." It abounds with gems such as, "The manager's function is not to make people work, it is to make it possible for people to work." It deals with such mundane topics as space, furniture, team meals together. DeMarco and Lister provide real data from their Coding War Games that show stunning correlation between performances of programmers from the same organization, and between workplace characteristics and both productivity and defect levels. The top performers' space is quieter, more private, better protected against interruption, and there is more of it. . . . Does it really matter to you . . . whether quiet, space, and privacy help your current people to do better work or [alternatively] help you to attract and keep better people?[19]”
― The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering
― The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering
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