Top 9 Code Quality Quotes

An API that isn't comprehensible isn't usable.

An API that isn't comprehensible isn't usable.

Code Quality, Programming, Software Engineering

"A Conversation with James Gosling". Interview with Bill Venners, www.artima.com. Jun 9, 2003.

At first I hoped that such a technically unsound project would collapse but I soon realized it was doomed to success. Almost anything in software can be implemented, sold, and even used given enough determination. There is nothing a mere scientist can say that will stand against the flood of a hundred million dollars. But there is one quality that cannot be purchased in this way - and that is reliability. The price of reliability is the pursuit of the utmost simplicity. It is a price which the very rich find most hard to pay.

Tony Hoare

Determination, Learning, Code Quality

"The Emperor's Old Clothes". Communications of the ACM 24, dl.acm.org. February 1981.

Time pressure gradually corrupts an engineer's standard of quality and perfection. It has a detrimental effect on people as well as products

Niklaus Wirth

Code Quality, People, Perfection

Testing by itself does not improve software quality. Test results are an indicator of quality, but in and of themselves, they don't improve it. Trying to improve software quality by increasing the amount of testing is like trying to lose weight by weighing yourself more often. What you eat before you step onto the scale determines how much you will weigh, and the software development techniques you use determine how many errors testing will find. If you want to lose weight, don't buy a new scale; change your diet. If you want to improve your software, don't test more; develop better.

Steve McConnell

Errors, Code Quality, Simplicity

Steve McConnell (2004). “Code Complete”, p.501, Pearson Education

Don't document bad code - rewrite it.

Brian Kernighan

Code Quality, Programming, Software Engineering

Good visual layout shows the logical structure of a program.

Steve McConnell

Code Quality, Logical, Program

Are you quite sure that all those bells and whistles, all those wonderful facilities of your so called powerful programming languages, belong to the solution set rather than the problem set?

Edsger Dijkstra

Powerful, Code Quality, Bells

Edsger Wybe Dijkstra (1976). “A Discipline of Programming”, Prentice Hall