The Quotation Index — Search results

Tag Tag Simplicity

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.

Tony Hoare The Emperor’s Old Clothes · 1981

Quotes

“Good design is as little as possible. Less, but better, because it concentrates on the essential aspects, and the products are not burdened with non-essentials. Back to purity, back to simplicity.”

Dieter Rams · No reliable source

“Simplicity is the hallmark of truth—we should know better, but complexity continues to have a morbid attraction. When you give for an academic audience a lecture that is crystal clear from alpha to omega, your audience feels cheated [...] The sore truth is that complexity sells better.”

Edsger Dijkstra · The Threats to Computing Science, 1984 · Primary source

“Don’t get enamored with the complexities you have learned to live with (be they of your own making or imported). The lurking suspicion that something could be simplified is the world’s richest source of rewarding challenges.”

Edsger Dijkstra · Advice to a Young Scientist, c. 1989 · Primary source

“The price of reliability is the pursuit of the utmost simplicity.”

Tony Hoare · The Emperor’s Old Clothes, 1981 · Primary source

“A theory is the more impressive the greater the simplicity of its premises is, the more different kinds of things it relates, and the more extended is its area of applicability.”

Albert Einstein · Autobiographical Notes, 1949 · Primary source

“I once said that my aim is to leave out everything superfluous in order to allow the essential to come through.”

Dieter Rams · Less but better, 1995 · Primary source

“Simplicity is a necessary precondition for reliability.”

Edsger Dijkstra · The Strengths of the Academic Enterprise, 1994 · Primary source

“The most important property of a program is whether it accomplishes the intentions of its user.”

Tony Hoare · An Axiomatic Basis for Computer Programming, 1969 · Primary source

“Inside every large program is a small program struggling to get out.”

Tony Hoare · Efficient Production of Large Programs, 1970 · Secondary source

“A crude measure of the simplicity of an engineering tool is the length of the manual required to give a full and complete account of how to use it and avoid misusing it.”

Tony Hoare · Programming is an Engineering Profession, 1983 · Primary source

“I have no dress except the one I wear. If you are going to be kind enough to give me one [a wedding dress], please let it be practical and dark, so that I can put it on afterwards to go to the laboratory.”

Marie Curie · Madame Curie: A Biography, 1938 · Secondary source

“My life is for itself and not for a spectacle.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Self-Reliance, 1841 · Primary source

“We ascribe beauty to that which is simple; which has no superfluous parts; which exactly answers its ends; which stands related to all things; which is the mean of many extremes. It is the most enduring quality and the most ascending quality.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Beauty, 1841 · Primary source

“Take a simple idea and take it seriously.”

Charlie Munger · Poor Charlie’s Almanack, 2005 · Primary source

“In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness.”