Library quotes

From Motley Bytes Wiki
Jump to: navigation, search

F_Terry_Baker

Code Library

“The most important of these is a development support library which encourages the visibility and manageability of the product, as well as reduces clerical effort on the part of the programmers. The library is typically maintained and operated by a programming librarian who serves to control the programming assets and to provide the necessary services for both programmers and management. As a result of its use, the entire project is maintained in a centralized, up-to-date, visible form which makes its status immediately apparent to code-competent software managers and makes it possible for programmers to answer their questions directly without relying on others.”
  • Source: Baker, F. T. (1975). Software Management Through Improved Programming Technology. ACM ’75: Proceedings of the 1975 Annual Conference, 286–287. https://doi.org/10.1145/800181.810346

Program Ownership

“A program or program system is a group product and should be produced in a way which allows and encourages maximum knowledge of it by each person involved. Furthermore, the management responsible for its development should be able to determine its status directly and not depend on the programmer's description of his progress on an 'invisible product'.”
  • Source: Baker, F. T. (1975). Software Management Through Improved Programming Technology. ACM ’75: Proceedings of the 1975 Annual Conference, 286–287. https://doi.org/10.1145/800181.810346

David_Epstein

Knowledge Bridge

“Work that builds bridges between disparate pieces of knowledge is less likely to be funded, less likely to appear in famous journals, more likely to be ignored upon publication, and then more likely in the long run to be a smash hit in the library of human knowledge.”
  • Source: David Epstein in the book “Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World”. Published 2019 by Riverhead Books. Chapter 12, page 282. ISBN 978-0735214484.

Samuel_C_Florman

Despair

“From the beginning of recorded time, we find evidence of despair, melancholy, and ennui. We find also an abundance of greed, treachery, vulgarity, and stupidity. Absorbed as we are in our own problems, we tend to forget how replete history is with wars, feuds, floods, plagues, fires, massacres, tortures, slavery, the wasting of cities, and the destruction of libraries.”
  • Source: From the book “The Existential Pleasures of Engineering” by {Samuel C. Florman}. Second edition published in 1994 by {St. Martin's Press}, New York, NY. First edition published in 1976. Kindle edition published in 2023. E-book ISBN 978-1466842366. Chapter 6, page 74.

Peter_Medawar

Scientific Creativity

“To be creative, scientists need libraries and laboratories and the company of other scientists; certainly, a quiet and untroubled life is a help. A scientist's work is in no way deepened or made more cogent by privation, anxiety, distress, or emotional harassment. To be sure, the private lives of scientists may be strangely and even comically mixed up, but not in ways that have any special bearing on the nature and quality of their work. If a scientist were to cut off an ear, no one would interpret such an action as evidence of an unhappy torment of creativity; nor will a scientist be excused any bizarrerie, however extravagant, on the grounds that he is a scientist, however brilliant.”
  • Source: Sir Peter B. Medawar, In Advice to a Young Scientist (1979), 40