Mark V. Hurd Quotes

The belief that complex systems require armies of designers and programmers is wrong. A system that is not understood in its entirety, or at least to a significant degree of detail by a single individual, should probably not be built.

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

The way to build a complex system that works is to build it from very simple systems that work.

Our customers do not differentiate between channels, and now, neither will we.

I want to listen to my Apple Music on my iPhone. I also want to listen to it on my iPad. I want to play it on my Apple TV; I want to be connected everywhere I go. It fits into the puzzle of everything that is Apple, and, therefore, it should not be seen as some sort of separate entity that is trying to find its way.

The combination of threads, remote-procedure-call interfaces, and heavyweight object-oriented design is especially dangerous... if you are ever invited onto a project that is supposed to feature all three, fleeing in terror might well be an appropriate reaction.

Software is inherently complicated. If you say to somebody I want an airline reservation system, to really say what you want in terms of overbooking and fares, and different airlines communicating with each or schedule changes, it's immensely complex. And so you can't write a program that's any simpler than that full specification.

In fact, Western culture has spent decades drawing lines and boxes around interconnected phenomena. We've chunked the world into pieces rather than explored its webby nature.

We have to be honest about the fact that not everyone who seeks to join our country will be able to successfully assimilate. Sometimes it's just not going to work out.

When the number of factors coming into play in a phenomenological complex is too large scientific method in most cases fails. One need only think of the weather, in which case the prediction even for a few days ahead is impossible. Nevertheless, no one doubts that we are confronted with a causal connection whose causal components are in the main known to us. Occurrences in this domain are beyond the reach of exact prediction because of the variety of factors in operation, not because of any lack of order in nature.

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

When a decision is made to cope with the symptoms of a problem, it is generally assumed that the corrective measures will solve the problem itself. They seldom do. Engineers cannot seem to get this through their heads. These countermeasures are all based on too narrow a definition of what is wrong. Human measures and countermeasures proceed from limited scientific truth and judgment. A true solution can never come about in this way.

I am more convinced than ever. Conceptual integrity is central to product quality.

Synergy means behavior of whole systems unpredicted by the behavior of their parts.

Navigation is about wayfinding, you can't treat it as separate because many other things run parallel with it. If you look at studies in wayfinding, everything from exhibit design to building the cathedrals, it's about creating a complete system. It's about looking at the whole.

The hardest single part of building a software system is deciding precisely what to build.

Management does not know what a system is.

We must [it has been arued] go beyond reductionism to a holistic recognition that biology and culture interpenetrate in an inextricable manner.

Unfortunately, the more complex the system, the greater the room for error.

The primary consequence of the computational nature of the universe is that the universe naturally generates complex systems, such as life. Although the basic laws of physics are comparatively simple in form, they give rise, because they are computationally universal, to systems of enormous complexity.

There's so much talk about the system. And so little understanding.

Reductionism is merciless.

I would therefore like to posit that computing's central challenge, how not to make a mess of it, has not yet been met.

It must be evident how multifarious and how mutually complicated are the considerations which the working of such an engine involve. There are frequently several distinct sets of effects going on simultaneously; all in a manner independent of each other, and yet to a greater or less degree exercising a mutual influence.