Quotes

This is a personal collection of engineering quotes by other people.

I'll try to keep track of the original authors and linkable sources as best as I can.

Science

Young man, in mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them.

The simplest and broadest truth about mathematics is that it revolves around proofs.

  • Jeremy Kun, A Programmer's Introduction to Mathematics

Computer science is when you understand a problem well enough to be able to explain it to a computer.

  • Donald Knuth, Luleå University of Technology, 2018

The best way to predict the future is to invent it.

Entropy is the logarithmic measure for information predictability.

Engineering

Software engineering is programming integrated over time.

  • Titus Winters

The smaller part of the job of programming is writing a program so that the computer can read it; the larger part is writing it so that other humans can read it.

  • Steve McConnell, Code Complete

Software engineering is what happens to programming when you add time and other programmers.

I didn’t pay enough attention to security.

Dawson’s first law of computing: O(n^2) is the sweet spot of badly scaling algorithms - fast enough to make it into production, but slow enough to make things fall down once it gets there.

Optimism

There are better things ahead than any we leave behind.

Fun

Expensive floor camera.