Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!leah!itsgw!steinmetz!uunet!ficc!karl
From: karl@ficc.uu.net (karl lehenbauer)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.misc
Subject: Re: More Perspective Humor
Message-ID: <3031@ficc.uu.net>
Date: 6 Feb 89 22:04:16 GMT
References: <[E.ISI.EDU].5-Feb-89.10:38:26.SAC.55SRW-LGS>
Organization: Ferranti International Controls
Lines: 17

In article <[E.ISI.EDU].5-Feb-89.10:38:26.SAC.55SRW-LGS>, SAC.55SRW-LGS@E.ISI.EDU writes:
>      Got this from an e-mail buddy and systems analyst in Ohio:
 
>         If builders built buildings the way programmers write
> programs, the first woodpecker to come along would have destroyed
> Civilization!

Software entities are more complex for their size than perhaps any other human
construct because no two parts are alike.  If they are, we make the two
similar parts into a subroutine -- open or closed.  In this respect, software
systems differ profoundly from computers, buildings, or automobiles, where
repeated elements abound.
- Fred Brooks, Jr.
-- 
-- uunet!ficc!karl	"The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious
-- karl@ficc.uu.net	encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without 
			understanding." -- Justice Louis O. Brandeis