Tony Hoare Quotes

The critical thing in developing software is not the program, it's the design. It is translating understanding of user needs into something that can be realized as a computer program.

I designed and developed an unbelievable number of applications early in my life.

Controlling complexity is the essence of computer programming.

Learning to program has no more to do with designing interactive software than learning to touch type has to do with writing poetry

Anyone can squash a bug but all professors of this world couldn't build one.

Software Engineering might be science; but that's not what I do. I'm a hacker, not an engineer.

This will surprise some of your readers, but my primary interest is not with computer security. I am primarily interested in writing software that works as intended.

I know one business, and that's how to make software.

Software development is technical activity conducted by human beings.

Code writers, they are my idols.

A lot of people assume that creating software is purely a solitary activity where you sit in an office with the door closed all day and write lots of code.

In software engineering, we have the term 'technical debt.' When you don't do a job correctly, unaddressed problems become harder and harder to solve.

Don't hurry your code. Make sure it works well and is well designed. Don't worry about timing.

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

The art of programming is the art of organizing complexity.

The hardest part of the software task is arriving at a complete and consistent specification, and much of the essence of building a program is in fact the debugging of the specification.

Prolific programmers contribute to certain disaster.

The problem is, in software design, often the consequences of your decisions don't become apparent for years.

Adding functionality is not just a matter of adding code.

And, I think that is actually appropriate because I'm really not the world's best programmer, I think it's a good thing that I'm not touching the code.

Writing software is a very intense, very personal thing. You have to have time to work your way through it, to understand it. Then debug it.

If you know how to make software, then you can create big things.

'PhotoCard' has 20 times as much code as the sum of 'QuickDraw,' 'MacPaint,' and 'HyperCard.' It is more elaborate and complicated, with all the client and server stuff. It took a lot more of me to do this than other projects, requiring an almost Mother Teresa dedication to do it.

In the computer field, the moment of truth is a running program; all else is prophecy.

I have never written a line of commercial code in my life. Nor should I.