The same talents or personality that make a person an excellent amateur programmer may make him singularly unsuited for being a professional one; but the lack of ability to adjust his working behavior to the problem at hand will always make him unsuited.

— Gerald Weinberg, The Pschcology of Computer Programming

…the idea of digital transformation with a beginning, a middle, and an end is bullshit.

— Stephen Orban, Ahead in the Cloud

Software engineering is gravely hampered today by immature practices. Specific problems include: – The prevalence of fads more typical of a fashion industry than of an engineering discipline – The lack of a sound, widely accepted theoretical basis – The huge number of methods and method variants, with differences little understood and artificially magnified – The lack of credible experimental evaluation and validation – The split between industry practice and academic research.

— Adam Barr, The Problem with Software

To him who seeks a reason but cannot abide any hypothesis of a design, whether in the form of Providence or of the Diabolical, there remains only the rationalist’s substitute for demonology—statistics.

— Stanislaw Lem, Seth Shostak and Michael Kandel, His Master’s Voice

The material which follows is food for thought, not a substitute for it.

— Gerald Weinberg, The Psychology of Computer Programming