
“An omelette, promised in two minutes, may appear to be progressing nicely. But when it has not set in two minutes, the customer has two choices—wait or eat it raw. Software customers have had the same choices. The cook has another choice; he can turn up the heat. The result is often an omelette nothing can save—burned in one part, raw in another.”
― The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering
― The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering
“Men and months are interchangeable commodities only when a task can be partitioned among many workers with no communication among them (Fig. 2.1). This is true of reaping wheat or picking cotton; it is not even approximately true of systems programming.”
― The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering
― The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering

“Marry, and you will regret it; don’t marry, you will also regret it; marry or don’t marry, you will regret it either way. Laugh at the world’s foolishness, you will regret it; weep over it, you will regret that too; laugh at the world’s foolishness or weep over it, you will regret both. Believe a woman, you will regret it; believe her not, you will also regret it… Hang yourself, you will regret it; do not hang yourself, and you will regret that too; hang yourself or don’t hang yourself, you’ll regret it either way; whether you hang yourself or do not hang yourself, you will regret both. This, gentlemen, is the essence of all philosophy.”
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“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.”
― The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering
― The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering
“The management question, therefore, is not whether to build a pilot system and throw it away. You will do that. The only question is whether to plan in advance to build a throwaway, or to promise to deliver the throwaway to customers.”
― The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering
― The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering
Yurii’s 2024 Year in Books
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