System Simplicity Quotes

I think the major good idea in Unix was its clean and simple interface: open, close, read, and write.

I built a system simple enough to sustain itself.

When there is no type hierarchy you don't have to manage the type hierarchy.

Code wants to be simple... I had to give up the idea that I had the perfect vision of the system to which the system had to conform. Instead, I had to accept that I was only the vehicle for the system expressing its own desire for simplicity. My vision could shape initial direction, and my attention to the desires of the code could affect how quickly and how well the system found its desired shape, but the system is riding me much more than I am riding the system.

UNIX is simple and coherent, but it takes a genius (or at any rate, a programmer) to understand and appreciate its simplicity.

The most reliable components are the ones you leave out.

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.

Chaos has come to be associated with the study of anything complex, but, in fact, the mathematical techniques are directly applicable only to simple systems that appear to be complex.

My being a teacher had a decisive influence on making language and systems as simple as possible so that in my teaching, I could concentrate on the essential issues of programming rather than on details of language and notation.

A software system is transparent when you can look at it and immediately see what is going on. It is simple when what is going on is uncomplicated enough for a human brain to reason about all the potential cases without strain

A Mac is a closed box, so Apple can make decisions about things that they don't include. That makes, it in some ways, simpler for them.

Perfect replication is the enemy of any robust system... Lacking a central nervous system much less a brain the parasite is a simple system designed to compromise a very specific target host. The more uniform the host, the more effective the infestation.