"Engineering is a method and a philosophy for coping with that which is uncertain at the earliest possible moment and to the ultimate service to mankind. It is not a science struggling for a place in the sun. Engineering is extrapolation from existing knowledge rather than interpolation between known points. Because engineering is science in action - the practice of decision making at the earliest moment - it has been defined as the art of skillful approximation. No situation in engineering is simple enough to be solved precisely, and none worth evaluating is solved exactly. Never are there sufficient facts, sufficient time, or sufficient money for an exact solution, for if by chance there were, the answer would be of academic and not economic interest to society. These are the circumstances that make engineering so vital and so creative." (Ronald B Smith, "Engineering Is...", Mechanical Engineering Vol. 86" (5), 1964)
"Computer science is at once abstract and pragmatic. The focus on actual computers introduces the pragmatic component: our central questions are economic ones like the relations among speed, accuracy, and cost of a proposed computation, and the hardware and software organization required. The" (often) better understood questions of existence and theoretical computability - however fundamental - remain in the background. On the other hand, the medium of computer science - information - is an abstract one. The meaning of symbols and numbers may change from application to application, either in mathematics or in computer science. Like mathematics, one goal of computer science is to create a basic structure in terms of inherently defined concepts that is independent of any particular application." (George E Forsythe, "What to do till the computer scientist comes", 1968)
"The process of preparing programs for a digital computer is especially attractive, not only because it can economically and scientifically rewarding, but also because it can be an aesthetic experience much like composing poetry or music." (Donald E Knuth, "The Art of Computer Programming: Fundamental algorithms", 1968)
"If all of the elements in a large system are loosely coupled to one another, then any one element can adjust to and modify a local a local unique contingency without affecting the whole system. These local adaptations can be swift, relatively economical, and substantial." (Karl E Weick, "Educational organizations as loosely coupled systems", 1976)
"The utility of a language as a tool of thought increases with the range of topics it can treat, but decreases with the amount of vocabulary and the complexity of grammatical rules which the user must keep in mind. Economy of notation is therefore important." (Kenneth E Iverson, "Notation as a Tool of Thought", 1979)
"Economic principles underlie the overall structure of the software lifecycle, and its primary refinements of prototyping, incremental development, and advancemanship. The primary economic driver of the life-cycle structure is the significantly increasing cost of making a software change or fixing a software problem, as a function of the phase in which the change or fix is made." (Barry Boehm, "Software Engineering Economics", 1981)
"If we look at the discipline of software engineering, we see that the microeconomics branch of economics deals more with the types of decisions we need to make as software engineers or managers." (Barry Boehm, "Software Engineering Economics", 1981)
"Throughout the software life cycle, there are many decision situations involving limited resources in which software engineering economics techniques provide useful assistance.(Barry Boehm, "Software Engineering Economics", 1984)
"The fundamental assumption underlying all software projects is that software is easy to change. If you violate this assumption by creating inflexible structures, then you undercut the economic model that the entire industry is based on." (Robert C Martin, "The Clean Coder: A code of conduct for professional programmers", 2011)
"There is common but flawed notion in enterprise IT circles that maintenance work requires less skill than full-scale development. As a result, project sponsors looking to reduce cost opt for a different team of lower-cost people for maintenance work. This is false economy. It hurts the larger business outcome and reduces IT agility." (Sriram Narayan, "Agile IT Organization Design: For Digital Transformation and Continuous Delivery", 2015)
"Engineering is the conscious application of science to the problems of economic production." (Halbert P Gillette)
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