"If builders build buildings the way programmers write programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization." - Gerald Weinberg
"Computers look smart, but their intelligence is a fraud, a sleight-of-hand stunt abetted by blind speed and a capacity for infinite reiteration. They must be instructed how to perform every tiny step of a problem of ratiocination, and in what sequence. That is why nothing that ever happens inside a computer is entirely unexpected (unless it is going wrong). The machine has been shown the way by its programmer, like a child taken for a stroll along a garden path. Both partners know the rules of the journey. Let the programmer stray one step off the path - let's say by coding a command that violates the machine's logic - and the computer will refuse to follow." - Dealers of Lightening, M. Hiltzik, 1999, pp. 84-85"There was something amazingly enticing about programming, he said. You created your own universe and you were master of it. The computer would do anything you programmed it to do. It was this unbelievable sandbox in which every grain of sand was under your control. - Vint Cerf, Where Wizards Stay Up Late, Hafner and Lyon, p. 139
On programming complexity..."Assemblers, compilers, flowcharting, procedural programming, structured programming, "artificial intelligence", fourth-generation languages, object orientation, and software-development methodologies without number have been touted and sold as a cure for this problem. All have failed as cures, if only because they 'succeeded' by escalating the normal level of program complexity to the point where (once again) human brains could barely cope. As Fred Brooks famously observed, there is no silver bullet." - The Art of UNIX Programming, Eric S. Raymond, p. 14