Wietse Venema Quotes

Writing software that's safe even in the presence of bugs makes the challenge even more interesting.

In a previous life I wrote the software that controlled my physics experiments. That software had to deal with all kinds of possible failures in equipment. That is probably where I learned to rely on multiple safety nets inside and around my systems.

I think it's a combination of technical and social factors that leads to all the defects in deployed software.

When I write software, I know that it will fail, either due to my own mistake, or due to some other cause.

All software sucks.

The reality of most software development is that the consequences of failure are simply nonexistent.

At first I hoped that such a technically unsound project would collapse but I soon realized it was doomed to success. Almost anything in software can be implemented, sold, and even used given enough determination. There is nothing a mere scientist can say that will stand against the flood of a hundred million dollars. But there is one quality that cannot be purchased in this way - and that is reliability. The price of reliability is the pursuit of the utmost simplicity. It is a price which the very rich find most hard to pay.

You can prematurely optimize maintainability, flexibility, security, and robustness just like you can performance.

If you don't handle [exceptions], we shut your application down. That dramatically increases the reliability of the system.

All real programs contain errors until proved otherwise which is impossible.

I think it is inevitable that people program poorly. Training will not substantially help matters. We have to learn to live with it.

I've done a lot of that kind of work before, anyway, and I was in good hands.

When it comes to software, I much prefer free software, because I have very seldom seen a program that has worked well enough for my needs, and having sources available can be a life-saver.

Defect-free software does not exist.

Agitator and the Agitar Management Dashboard lower the barriers to accountability in software development and increase the value of developer testing.

The biggest challenge for open source is that as it enters the consumer market, as projects like WordPress and Firefox have done, you have to create a user experience that is on par or better than the proprietary alternatives.

There is a strong movement towards increased accountability for software developers and software development organizations.

My reply is: the software has no known bugs, therefore it has not been updated.

When someone builds a bridge, he uses engineers who have been certified as knowing what they are doing. Yet when someone builds you a software program, he has no similar certification, even though your safety may be just as dependent upon that software working as it is upon the bridge supporting your weight.

This will surprise some of your readers, but my primary interest is not with computer security. I am primarily interested in writing software that works as intended.

Linux has never been about quality. There are so many parts of the system that are just these cheap little hacks, and it happens to run.

I started working on OpenBSD, and many earlier projects, because I have always felt that vendor systems were not designed for quality.

Yet, I am convinced that there is a need for high quality software, and the time will come when it will be recognized that it is worth investing effort in its development and in using a careful, structured approach based on safe, structured languages.

I'm not saying we purposely introduced bugs or anything, but this is kind of a natural result of any complexities of software... that you can't fully test it.

Apple's advantage is that it designs and builds software together, so if the software isn't excellent, it does the superlative hardware a disservice.