Top posting

[Benjamin Lutz]

On Mon, 22 Mar 2004 15:40:25 +1030
Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog at FreeBSD.org> wrote:

> Heh.  That's human nature.  To quote:
> 
>    What is actually happening, I am afraid, is that we all tell each
>    other and ourselves that software engineering techniques should be
>    improved considerably, because there is a crisis.  But there are a
>    few boundary conditions which apparently have to be satisfied:
>    
>        1. We may not change our thinking habits.
>        2. We may not change our programming tools.
>        3. We may not change our hardware.
>        4. We may not change our tasks.
>        5. We may not change the organizational set-up
>           in which the work has to be done.
>    
>    Now under these five immutable boundary conditions, we have to try
>    to improve matters. This is utterly ridiculous.
>    
>    Edsger W. Dijkstra, on receiving the ACM Turing Award in 1972

Great quote. I forwarded it to a friend, his reply cracked me up as
well (translated from german):

> Oh, he said as early as 1972?
> That the crisis still isn't over, that we are aware of. It's just
> that at the moment, things are looking like this:
>
>   1. We are forced to change our thinking habits (Patterns, UML, ...)
>   2. We are forced to replace all our tools (.net c#)
>   3. We need new hardware (64bit anyone?)
>   4. We need more flexibility (low level programmers are supposed
>      to be good pixel artists)
>   5. We desperately need a new company structure.

Greetings
Benjamin
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