The Problem With Software: Why Smart Engineers Write Bad Code (The MIT Press)

programmers have arrived at a situation where they can be paid large sums of money to pursue an activity that many of them would do in their spare time anyway, in an environment that entails no undue physical exertion or risk.

Fisher’s fundamental theorem states—in terms appropriate to the present context—that the better adapted a system is to a particular environment, the less adaptable it is to new environments. By stretching our imagination a bit, we can see how this might apply to computer programs as well as to snails, fruit flies, and tortoises.”21 In other words,

The magic of myth and legend has come true in our time. One types the correct incantation on a keyboard, and a display screen comes to life, showing things that never were nor could be.”

The Gang of Four stated two principles of good object-oriented design that were present in all the patterns: “favor object composition over class inheritance” and “program to an interface, not an implementation.”8

Smullyan’s point was that a reasonably modest person is behaving inconsistently, which he happily admits to; when it comes to programmers, however, the conceited approach usually wins out.

This institutionalized acceptance of shoddiness is one of the most shameful aspects of software engineering. Software bugs are not inevitable, but trying to write software that never crashes is a nongoal, as they say, for the current crop of programmers.

In the Beginning … Was the Command

“It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration.”

Nobody is going to assume that the same bridge design, with just a few modifications, will handle twice as much distance or weight,

The Science of Computing: Shaping a Discipline,