CodeQuotes » Design

Johnson: Reusable

Neal Enssle — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 09:58:56 +0000

“Before software can be reusable it first has to be usable.”

Spolsky: Abstractions

Neal Enssle — Fri, 21 Apr 2006 10:55:42 +0000

“And if you go too far up, abstraction-wise, you run out of oxygen. Sometimes smart thinkers just don’t know when to stop, and they create these absurd, all-encompassing, high-level pictures of the universe that are all good and fine, but don’t actually mean anything at all.”

— Joel Spolsky

Chalhoub: Design without code

Neal Enssle — Sat, 15 Apr 2006 10:02:27 +0000

“Design without code is just a daydream. Code without design is a nightmare”

— Assaad Chalhoub

Jobs: Design

Neal Enssle — Fri, 14 Apr 2006 10:05:43 +0000

“It’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.”

— Steve Jobs

Graham: Oil paint

Neal Enssle — Sat, 08 Apr 2006 11:19:04 +0000

“What made oil paint so exciting, when it first became popular in the fifteenth century, was that you could make the finished work from the prototype. You could make a preliminary drawing if you wanted to, but you weren’t held to it; you could work out all the details, and even make major changes as you finished the painting. You can do this with software too. A prototype doesn’t have to be just a model; you can refine it into the finished product. [...] It’s good for morale.”

— P. Graham, Hackers and Painters

Cringeley: Ease of use

Neal Enssle — Wed, 29 Mar 2006 11:48:13 +0000

“Cringley’s Second Law: Ease of use with equivalent performance varies with the square root of the cost of development. That means that to design a computer that’s ten times easier to use would cost 100 times as much.”

— Robert Cringeley

Rickey: Luck and design

Neal Enssle — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 12:05:35 +0000

“Luck is the residue of design.”

— Branch Rickey

Ritchie: Proper design

Neal Enssle — Mon, 20 Mar 2006 12:04:41 +0000

“With proper design, the features come cheaply. This approach is arduous, but continues to succeed.”

— Dennis Ritchie

Gamma: Encapsulation

Neal Enssle — Sat, 18 Mar 2006 12:06:57 +0000

“Encapsulate the concept that varies.”

— Erich Gamma, Design Patterns

Fuller: Beautiful Problems

Neal Enssle — Tue, 07 Mar 2006 13:15:37 +0000

“When I am working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only of how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller