Norman R. Augustine Quotes

Correct" is a property of small systems.

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

The orthogonal features, when combined, can explode into complexity.

I don't have to worry No matter what they do to it, it works.

I think complexity is mostly sort of crummy stuff that is there because it's too expensive to change the interface.

You go for the quality of the performance, not the longevity of it.

If something is easy to repair, it is easy to construct.

Move fast with stable infrastructure.

Human beings, viewed as behaving systems, are quite simple. The apparent complexity of our behavior over time is largely a reflection of the complexity of the environment in which we find ourselves.

In their search for quality, people seem to be looking for permanency in a time of change.

The point is that you want to have a system that is responsive.

One of the obvious things that went wrong with Multics as a commercial success was just that it was sort of over-engineered in a sense. There was just too much in it.

The organizational architecture is really that a centipede walks on hundred legs and one or two don't count. So if I lose one or two legs, the process will go on, the organization will go on, the growth will go on.

We need to build change in to our systems and let these systems evolve as circumstances change. Change is inevitable, but we need to do a better job of dealing with it, because when we start building huge gleaming monoliths, I think we start getting into trouble.

Steady.

… maintain the integrity and flexibility of our teachings

As you deal with more and more complex systems, it becomes harder and harder to find deep and interesting properties.

The technology I like is the American paperback edition of 'Freedom.' I can spill water on it, and it would still work! So it's pretty good technology.

The goal was to have matches that would stand the test of time.

We think continuity's important.

I need to be able to depend on the products I use to stand up to the demands I put on my vehicles.

A house built on sand is, in fair weather, just as good as if builded on a rock. A cobweb is as good as the mightiest chain cable when there is no strain on it. It is trial that proves one thing weak and another strong.

The human mind is so complex and things are so tangled up with each other that, to explain a blade of straw, one would have to take to pieces an entire universe. A definition is a sack of flour compressed into a thimble.

The world is too complex for subsumption under any general theory of change.

Books: a beautifully browsable invention that needs no electricity and exists in a readable form no matter what happens.