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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.

— Fernando J. Corbató On Building Systems That Will Fail (1991)

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More quotes by Fernando J. Corbató

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)

My definition of elegance is the achievement of a given functionality with a minimum of mechanism and a maximum of clarity.

Regardless of whether one is dealing with assembly language or compiler language, the number of debugged lines of source code per day is about the same!

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)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Fernando J. Corbató (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.