Metric quotes
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Contents
Robert_N_Britcher
When to Stop Testing
“Two of the great questions in developing computer systems are (1) When do we stop testing? and (2) At any point during testing, how far along are we? The second question cannot be answered until the first one has been answered. The first question can be answered by fiat.”
- Source: Britcher, Robert N. (1999). The Limits of Software: People, Projects, and Perspectives. Reading, MA: Addison Wesley. ISBN 0-201-43323-0. Page 61.
Edsger_Wybe_Dijkstra
Lines of Code
“My point today is that, if we wish to count lines of code, we should not regard them as 'lines produced' but as 'lines spent': the current conventional wisdom is so foolish as to book that count on the wrong side of the ledger.”
- Source: Dijkstra (1988) On the cruelty of really teaching computing science (EWD1036). Retrieved 2022 from http://www.cs.utexas.edu
/users /EWD /transcriptions /EWD10xx /EWD1036.html
Charles_Goodhart
Goodhart's Law
“Any observed statistical regularity will tend to collapse once pressure is placed upon it for control purposes.”
- Source: Goodhart, Charles (1975). "Problems of Monetary Management: The UK Experience". In Courakis, Anthony S. (ed.). Inflation, Depression, and Economic Policy in the West. Totowa, New Jersey: Barnes and Noble Books (published 1981). p. 116. ISBN 0-389-20144-8.
Robert_M_McClure
Time and Motion Code
“I know of one organisation that attempts to apply time and motion standards to the output of programmers. They judge a programmer by the amount of code he produces. This is guaranteed to produce insipid code”
- Source: Rober M. McClure in a report entitled Software Engineering: Report of a Conference Sponsored by the NATO Science Committee. Chaired by Friedrich Ludwig Bauer. Edited by P. Naur; B. Randell. Conference held 1968-10-07 through 1968-10-11 in Garmisch, Germany. OCLC: 35337842. See http://homepages.cs.ncl.ac.uk/brian.randell/NATO/index.html ; http://homepages.cs.ncl.ac.uk/brian.randell/NATO/nato1968.PDF ; https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1102020 ; https://books.google.com/books/about/Software_engineering.html?id=Uc9QAAAAYAAJ . Page 52.
Marilyn_Strathern
Measures
“When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”
- Source: Strathern, Marilyn (1997). "'Improving ratings': audit in the British University system". European Review. 5(3). John Wiley & Sons: 305–321. doi:10.1002/(SICI)1234-981X(199707)5:3<305::AID-EURO184>3.0.CO;2-4. S2CID 145644958.
Edward_Yourdon
Better Business
“To stay in business, you have to be better — better than you were last year, better than you were yesterday. But you can't improve if you don't know your current situation.”
- Source: Edward Yourdon in the book “Decline and Fall of the American Programmer”. Published in 1992 by Prentice Hall. ISBN: 0-13-203670-3. Chapter 3, section 7.1, page 170.
