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Some software is actually pretty good, by any standard. Think of the Mars Rovers, Google, and the Human Genome Project. Now, that’s quality software!

Bjarne Stroustrup

When done well, software is invisible.
BJARNE STROUSTRUP

Done Invisible Software
Corporate practices can be directly hostile to individuals with exceptional skills and initiative in technical matters. I consider such management of technical people cruel and wasteful.
BJARNE STROUSTRUP

Initiative Matters People Practice Wasteful
C++ is designed to allow you to express ideas, but if you don’t have ideas or don’t have any clue about how to express them, C++ doesn’t offer much help.
BJARNE STROUSTRUP

Clue Helping Ideas
Too many managers and executives try to reduce programming to a low-level assembly-line activity. That’s inefficient, wasteful, costly in the long run, and inhumane to programmers.
BJARNE STROUSTRUP

Insufficient Long Running Trying
For this reason restricting language features with the intent of eliminating programmer errors is at best dangerous.
BJARNE STROUSTRUP

Dangerous Language Program Think
Creativity, engineering principles, and evolutionary change are needed to create a satisfactory large system.
BJARNE STROUSTRUP

Creativity Engineering Evolutionary Satisfactory
Clearly, I reject the view that there is one way that is right for everyone and for every problem.
BJARNE STROUSTRUP

Problem Views Way
Nobody should call themselves a professional if they only knew one language.
BJARNE STROUSTRUP

Language Person Professional Should
I assume that a sufficiently skilled will be able to do anything not explicitly forbidden by the hardware.
BJARNE STROUSTRUP

Able Assuming Forbidden
Always think about how a piece of code should be used: good interfaces are the essence of good code.
BJARNE STROUSTRUP

Clever Dirty Thinking
Design and programming are human activities; forget that and all is lost.
BJARNE STROUSTRUP

Design Forget Lost
People who passionately want to believe that the world is basically simple react to this with a fury that goes beyond what I consider appropriate for discussing a programming language.
BJARNE STROUSTRUP

Believe Discussing People Simple
[Corporate programming] is often done to the point where the individual is completely submerged in corporate “culture” with no outlet for unique talents and skills.
BJARNE STROUSTRUP

Outlet Practice Skills Unique
I like doing research that has an impact. If I went to a company to make what they call ‘real money,’ I’d be just trying to make a system work as fast as possible to meet the product and serice deadlines.
BJARNE STROUSTRUP

Company Impact Possible Real Trying
Proof by analogy is fraud.
BJARNE STROUSTRUP

Analogies Fraud Proof
Defining OO as based on the use of class hierarchies and virtual functions is also practical in that it provides some guidance as to where OO is likely to be successful.
BJARNE STROUSTRUP

Class Function Hirerachies Successful Use

Some software is actually pretty good, by any standard. Think of the Mars Rovers, Google, and the Human Genome Project. Now, that’s quality software!

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Some software is actually pretty good, by any standard. Think of the Mars Rovers, Google, and the Human Genome Project. Now, that’s quality software!

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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