Skip to content

Quotes from On Building Systems That Will Fail — Fernando J. Corbató

1926–2019 United States

← All quotes by Fernando J. Corbató

6 quotes

Because one has to be an optimist to begin an ambitious project, it is not surprising that underestimation of completion time is the norm.

On Building Systems That Will Fail (1991)

Design bugs are often subtle and occur by evolution with early assumptions being forgotten as new features or uses are added to systems.

On Building Systems That Will Fail (1991)

To our dismay, users who had been enduring several hour waits between jobs run under batch processing were suddenly restless when response times were more than a second.

On Building Systems That Will Fail (1991)

The computer field is intoxicated with change. We have seen galloping growth over a period of four decades and it still does not seem to be slowing down. The field is not mature yet and already it accounts for a significant percentage of the Gross National Product.

On Building Systems That Will Fail (1991)

The value of metaphors should not be underestimated. Metaphors have the virtue of an expected behavior that is understood by all. Unnecessary communication and misunderstandings are reduced. Learning and education are quicker. In effect metaphors are a way of internalizing and abstracting concepts allowing one's thinking to be on a higher plane and low-level mistakes to be avoided.

On Building Systems That Will Fail (1991)

It is important to emphasize the value of simplicity and elegance, for complexity has a way of compounding difficulties and as we have seen, creating mistakes. My definition of elegance is the achievement of a given functionality with a minimum of mechanism and a maximum of clarity.

On Building Systems That Will Fail (1991)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Fernando J. Corbató (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.