I’ve heard it said that the difference between useful software and worthless crap is that people build useful software for themselves, and build worthless crap for other people to use.

“Uncle” Bob Martin
Java Dates

If debugging is the process of removing bugs, then programming must be the process of putting them in.

Edsger Dijkstra

Programmers are responsible for software quality – quality in their own work, quality in the products that incorporate their work, and quality at the interfaces between components. Quality has never been and will never be tested in. The responsibility is both moral and professional.

Boris Beizer
(from Software Testing Techniques, Chapter 13)

“Good enough” software is rarely good enough. It is a sad manifestation of the spirit of modern times, in which an individual’s pride in his or her work has become rare.

Niklaus Wirth
(From an interview in Software Development, June 1997)

Agile Development isn’t about doing things faster, it’s about doing the right things sooner, which coincidentally makes you appear faster.

- Anonymous

Bill Crane, the vice president of engineering at LinkedIn, says local members of the social networking site may haveorange-prize Orange County as a geographic designation for members’ profiles within two weeks.

http://jan.freedomblogging.com/2009/09/16/linkedin-working-on-oc-geographic-designation/22015/

Another purpose of measuring capacity is to improve throughput. If you plan for less than your capacity, you get less done than you could have. If you plan for more than your capacity, you get less done than you could have.

- Kent Beck
(original signatory of the Agile Manifesto)

Be brilliant.

Brilliant people get to do whatever they want.

- Peter Shankman (@skydiver on Twitter)

While real people will use your really bad product because they are paid to use it, if it is a good product with decent behavior, productivity will climb. You can walk into any organization and spot the SAP users – they are crying in the corner. You can’t tell me that that’s good for business.

- Alan Cooper
(from “An Insurgence of Quality”)