Related:

• The tar pit of software engineering will continue to be sticky for a long time to come.
  One can expect the human race to continue attempting systems just within or just beyond our reach...
• This, then, is the demythologizing of the man-month.
  The number of months of a project depends on its sequential constraints....
• More software projects have gone awry for lack of calendar time than for all other causes combined.
  -- Frederick P. Brooks, Jr., "The Mythical Man Month...
• The tar pit of software engineering will continue to be sticky for a long time to come.
  One can expect the human race to continue attempting systems just within or just beyond our reach...
• Digital computers are themselves more complex than most things people build
  They have very large numbers of states. This makes conceiving, describing, and testing them hard....
• Beach's Law: No two identical parts are alike.
• No two identical parts are alike. -- Beach's Law
• The complexity of software is an essential property, not an accidental one.
  Hence, descriptions of a software entity that abstract away its complexity often abstract away its essence....
• A little retrospection shows that although many fine
  useful software systems have been designed by committees and built as part of multipart projects, those software systems that have excited passionate fans are those that are the products of one or a few designing minds, great designers....