Home / Quotes / Quote by Eric S. Raymond

Quote by Eric S. Raymond

“Complexity control is the central problem of writing software in the real world”

Quote by Eric S. Raymond

Author

Eric S. Raymond

Eric S. Raymond, born on December 4, 1957, is a renowned programmer with a significant impact on the field of open-source software. He made important contributions to the development of the Linux kernel and is best known for his theoretical contributions to the open-source movement. Raymond's book 'The Cathedral and the Bazaar' has had a profound influence on software development models. more

You May Also Like

“We like reactions - a reaction is walking out on us, a reaction is throwing tomatoes at the stage, that's a healthy psychological reaction.”

Stage Walking Healthy Reactions Psychological Throwing Tomatoes Walking Out

Author:Alice Cooper

“Software is largely a service industry operating under the persistent but unfounded delusion that it is a manufacturing industry”

Industry Delusion Software Persistent Manufacturing Service Industry

Book:The Cathedral & the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary

Source: The Cathedral & the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary

“A software system is transparent when you can look at it and immediately see what is going on. It is simple when what is going on is uncomplicated enough for a human brain to reason about all the potential cases without strain”

Humans Looks Reason Enough Simple Brain Cases Software Strain Transparent Human Brain Uncomplicated

Book:The Art of UNIX Programming

Source: The Art of UNIX Programming

“The only way to write complex software that won't fall on its face is to hold its global complexity down - to build it out of simple pieces connected by well-defined interfaces, so that most problems are local and you can have some hope of fixing or optimizing a part without breaking the whole”

Way Writing Wells Whole Problem Faces Fall Simple Pieces Complexes Connected Locals Defined Complexity Software Fixing Interfaces

Author:Eric S. Raymond

“Of course, C proved indispensible to the developers of all its alternatives. Dig down through enough implementation layers under any of the other languages surveyed here and you will find a core implemented in pure, portable C”

Enough Courses Language Pure Core Alternatives Layers Implementation Developers

Book:The Art of UNIX Programming

Source: The Art of UNIX Programming

“Prototype, then polish. Get it working before you optimize it”

Polish Prototype

Author:Eric S. Raymond

“Rushing to optimize before the bottlenecks are known may be the only error to have ruined more designs than feature creep. From tortured code to incomprehensible data layouts, the results of obsessing about speed or memory or disk usage at the expense of transparency and simplicity are everywhere. They spawn innumerable bugs and cost millions of man-hours - often, just to get marginal gains in the use of some resource much less expensive than debugging time”

Source: The Art of UNIX Programming

“Programmer time is expensive; conserve it in preference to machine time”

Machines Expensive Preference Programmers

Book:The Art of UNIX Programming

Source: The Art of UNIX Programming

“The central problem of C and C++ is that they require programmers to do their own memory management”

Problem Memories Management Programmers

Author:Eric S. Raymond

“It is widely grokked that cats have the hacker nature”

Book:The New Hacker's Dictionary

Source: The New Hacker's Dictionary