The fundamental problem with program maintenance is that fixing a defect has a substantial chance of introducing another.
Fred BrooksRead
The programmer, like the poet, works only slightly removed from pure thought-stuff. He builds his castles in the air, from air, creating by exertion of the imagination. Few media of creation are so flexible, so easy to polish and rework, so readily capable of realizing grand conceptual structures.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Both programmers and poets create from imagination, using flexible mediums to express ideas.
This quote by Fred Brooks highlights the creative process shared by programmers and poets. It suggests that both professions rely on imagination to build abstract concepts, and emphasizes the flexibility and ease with which they can refine their creations, allowing for the realization of complex ideas and structures in their respective domains.
Themes
ProgrammerPoetImaginationCreationFlexibility
In practice
Example use cases
During a tech conference to inspire innovation in software development.
More from Fred Brooks
All quotes βAdding manpower to a late software project makes it later
Fred BrooksRead
Similar quotes
If I had taken a proprietary control of the Web, then it would never have taken off. People only committed their time to it because they knew it was open, shared: that they could help decide what would happen to it next.. and I wouldn't be raking off 10%!
Tim Berners-LeeRead
Your filter bubble is your own personal, unique universe of information that you live in online. What's in your filter bubble depends on who you are, and it depends on what you do. But you don't decide what gets in - and more importantly, you don't see what gets edited out.
Eli PariserRead
Wandering around the web is like living in a world in which every doorway is actually one of those science fiction devices which deposit you in a completely different part of the world when you walk through them. In fact, it isn't like it, it is it.
Douglas AdamsRead
Why commit technological suicide by restricting the flow of talent into the United States?
Michio KakuRead
The PC is the LSD of the '90s.
Timothy LearyRead
We monitor many frequencies. We listen always. Came a voice, out of the babel of tongues, speaking to us. It played us a mighty dub.
William GibsonRead