Mitchell Baker Quotes

The software industry has to become better in componentization. That's a clear focus for most of the software companies. How components look, how they are maintained, the ability to maintain them separately.

I've been a software engineer, a novelist, a journalist, and a manager - and managing developers is easily the trickiest thing I've ever done.

Our ultimate goal is extensible programming (EP). By this, we mean the construction of hierarchies of modules, each module adding new functionality to the system.

The way that NetBeans is architected, it's not so much a tool as a tool environment.

I used to be enamored of object-oriented programming. I'm now finding myself leaning toward believing that it is a plot designed to destroy joy.

Of course, C proved indispensible to the developers of all its alternatives. Dig down through enough implementation layers under any of the other languages surveyed here and you will find a core implemented in pure, portable C

I will, in fact, claim that the difference between a bad programmer and a good one is whether he considers his code or his data structures more important. Bad programmers worry about the code. Good programmers worry about data structures and their relationships.

Here's the secret that every successful software company is based on: You can domesticate programmers the way beekeepers tame bees. You can't exactly communicate with them, but you can get them to swarm in one place and when they're not looking, you can carry off the honey.

Modularize, don't customize. Build a platform as opposed to building all of the custom technology and custom vertical experiences.

I've put our guys in position. I gave them the blueprint. I think they're ready.

Inside every large program is a small program struggling to get out.

Think of prototypes as a funny markup language--the interpretation is left up to the rendering engine.

I have met bright students in computer science who have never seen the source code of a large program. They may be good at writing small programs, but they can't begin to learn the different skills of writing large ones if they can't see how others have done it.

The art of programming is the art of organizing complexity.

All the PHP code I've seen in that experience has been messy, unmaintainable crap. Spaghetti SQL wrapped in spaghetti PHP wrapped in spaghetti HTML, replicated in slightly-varying form in dozens of places.

There is a point in your life when you realize that you have written enough destructors.

People are building the software and so having the pieces be such that a single person understands all the tradeoffs and everything that's going on in a piece is extremely valuable. It avoids getting into an experimental mode where you're just trying things out. That never works.

If a man can make typewriters better than anyone else, let us, in the name of common sense, keep him on the job of making typewriters.

I am great at delegating when someone is doing great work. The problem - and this sounds terrible - is that there are very few people who are strong enough for you to be able to delegate to.

Java and C++ make you think that the new ideas are like the old ones. Java is the most distressing thing to hit computing since MS-DOS.

Even if you aren't in doubt, consider the mental welfare of the person who has to maintain the code after you, and who will probably put parens in the wrong place.

As Mono matures, people will begin to use it to write desktop components that take advantage of all the hard work thats gone into some of the meatier GNOME libraries, as well as the nifty language features of C#.

"Legacy code" often differs from its suggested alternative by actually working and scaling.

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

In programming when you're making a change you have to know all the affected places, and you have to be able to model in your head what the performance impact will be.