Hasso Plattner Quotes

We've broken the code base into logical chunks, called modules, and the foundation staff delegate authority for the modules to people with the most expertise.

Our ultimate goal is extensible programming (EP). By this, we mean the construction of hierarchies of modules, each module adding new functionality to the system.

The way that NetBeans is architected, it's not so much a tool as a tool environment.

Premature optimization is the root of all evil.

C is a razor-sharp tool, with which one can create an elegant and efficient program or a bloody mess.

When we started off we didn't know how to spell software.

Always think about how a piece of code should be used: good interfaces are the essence of good code. You can hide all kinds of clever and dirty code behind a good interface if you really need such code.

C++ is designed to allow you to express ideas, but if you don't have ideas or don't have any clue about how to express them, C++ doesn't offer much help.

There are only two industries that refer to their customers as 'users'.

The only way to write complex software that won't fall on its face is to hold its global complexity down - to build it out of simple pieces connected by well-defined interfaces, so that most problems are local and you can have some hope of fixing or optimizing a part without breaking the whole

Of course, C proved indispensible to the developers of all its alternatives. Dig down through enough implementation layers under any of the other languages surveyed here and you will find a core implemented in pure, portable C

Modularize, don't customize. Build a platform as opposed to building all of the custom technology and custom vertical experiences.

Software is largely a service industry operating under the persistent but unfounded delusion that it is a manufacturing industry

Patent law holds us back, in every which way, shape or form. There is place for it, in physical products, in pharmaceuticals, but in software in particular, there is no place for it.

Think of prototypes as a funny markup language--the interpretation is left up to the rendering engine.

I have met bright students in computer science who have never seen the source code of a large program. They may be good at writing small programs, but they can't begin to learn the different skills of writing large ones if they can't see how others have done it.

There is a point in your life when you realize that you have written enough destructors.

People are building the software and so having the pieces be such that a single person understands all the tradeoffs and everything that's going on in a piece is extremely valuable. It avoids getting into an experimental mode where you're just trying things out. That never works.

Java and C++ make you think that the new ideas are like the old ones. Java is the most distressing thing to hit computing since MS-DOS.

I used to be enamored of object-oriented programming. I'm now finding myself leaning toward believing that it is a plot designed to destroy joy.

As Mono matures, people will begin to use it to write desktop components that take advantage of all the hard work thats gone into some of the meatier GNOME libraries, as well as the nifty language features of C#.

"Legacy code" often differs from its suggested alternative by actually working and scaling.

Uruguay is one of the biggest producers of software. We are breaking with the neoliberal model. We do not believe in free trade.

A great lathe operator commands several times the wage of an average lathe operator, but a great writer of software code is worth 10,000 times the price of an average software writer.

The most amazing achievement of the computer software industry is its continuing cancellation of the steady and staggering gains made by the computer hardware industry.