Art of simplicity, an important principle in Software Engineering via quotes
“I have chosen to stress in this talk is the following. We shall do a much better programming job, provided that we approach the task with a full appreciation of its tremendous difficulty, provided that we stick to modest and elegant programming languages, provided that we respect the intrinsic limitations of the human mind and approach the task as Very Humble Programmers. “ — Turing Lecture 1972 The Humble Programmer by Edsger W. Dijkstra
“There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult” — Tony Hoare, Turing award
“Programs are meant to be read by humans and only incidentally for computers to execute” — Donald Knuth, Turing award
“We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimisation is the root of all evil”– Donald Knuth, Turing award
“Don’t be a slave to history. Don’t let existing code dictate future code. All code can be replaced if it is no longer appropriate. Even within one program, don’t let what you’ve already done constrain what you do next — be ready to refactor… “
- Andrew Hunt, The Pragmatic Programmer“If you haven’t measured, you don’t know” — Performance optimisation — Steve McConnell
Simplicity — the art of maximising the amount of work not done — is essential.
References —
#Code Complete course — construx.com by Steve McConnell
# Agile Manifesto
# The Pragmatic Programmer
