Traditional software development methodologies are among the least productive and possibly produce the lowest quality. Such methodologies are governed by the need for management control and repeatability - that is, management wants costs to be predictable. [Richard Gabriel]

I believe the quest for solutions in languages and methods is alluring because it appears to absolve us from having to address the tough issues. Chief among these is capturing and articulating the abstractions and components required to build widely reusable software in complex domains. [Douglas Schmidt]

There is the false belief that large, innovative designs can be completely specified in advance, then painlessly magicked out of the void by the normal efforts of a team of normally talented programmers. In fact, experience has shown repeatedly that good designs arise only from evolutionary, exploratory, interaction between one (or at most a handful) of exceptionally able designers and an active user population - and that the first try at a big idea is always wrong. Unfortunately, because these truths don't fit the planning models beloved of management, and they are generally ignored. [Eric Raymond]

The Navy is a system designed by geniuses to be executed by idiots. If you find yourself in the Navy and you are not an idiot, you can only function well by pretending to be one. [The Caine Mutiny]

Too often we confuse effort and progress. [Fred Brooks]

The man-month is a fallacious and dangerous myth, for it implies that men and months are interchangeable. [Fred Brooks]

Lacking any objective measure, we often judge how difficult a program is by how hard a programmer works on it. Using this sort of measure, we can easily fall into believing that the worst programmers are the best. [Gerald Weinberg]

Measuring software productivity by lines of code is like measuring progress on an airplane by how much it weighs. [Bill Gates]

You get what you measure. [Tom Peters]

[Process], if it has no [products], is dead, being by itself. But someone may well say, "You have [process], and I have [products]; show me your [process] without the [products], and I will show you my [process] by my [products]. [James the Apostle]

Beaten paths are for beaten men. [Elbonian proverb]