Niklaus Wirth Quotes

37 quotes in 564 categories

• The belief that complex systems require armies of designers and programmers is wrong. A system that is not understood in its entirety, or at least…
• A primary cause of complexity is that software vendors uncritically adopt almost any feature that users want.
• Prolific programmers contribute to certain disaster.
• Increasingly, people seem to misinterpret complexity as sophistication, which is baffling -- the incomprehensible should cause suspicion rather than admiration.
• Programs should be written and polished until they acquire publication quality.
• Time pressure gradually corrupts an engineer's standard of quality and perfection. It has a detrimental effect on people as well as products
• Software is getting slower more rapidly than hardware becomes faster.
• But active programming consists of the design of new programs, rather than contemplation of old programs.
• Clearly, programming courses should teach methods of design and construction, and the selected examples should be such that a gradual development can be nicely demonstrated.
• It is evidently necessary to generate and test candidates for solutions in some systematic manner.
• Many people tend to look at programming styles and languages like religions: if you belong to one, you cannot belong to others. But this analogy…
• My being a teacher had a decisive influence on making language and systems as simple as possible so that in my teaching, I could concentrate…
• My duty as a teacher is to train, educate future programmers.
• Reliable and transparent programs are usually not in the interest of the designer.
• Whereas Europeans generally pronounce my name the right way ('Ni-klows Wirt'), Americans invariably mangle it into 'Nick-les Worth'. This is to say that Europeans call…
• I am convinced that there is a need for high quality software, and the time will come when it will be recognized that it is…
• The possible solutions to a given problem emerge as the leaves of a tree, each node representing a point of deliberation and decision.
• Complexity has and will maintain a strong fascination for many people. It is true that we live in a complex world and strive to solve…
• Software gets slower faster than hardware gets faster. (Or, sometimes known by] Grove [the head of Intel] giveth and Gates [the head of Microsoft] taketh…
• Software development is technical activity conducted by human beings.

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