The 1978 citation presented further below identified the creator as Gerald Weinberg, an early computer scientist who had worked at the University of Nebraska.īelow are additional selected citations in chronological order. Thus we allocate 2 days for a one hour task. To estimate the time it takes to do a task: estimate the time you think it should take, multiply by 2, and change the unit of measure to the next highest unit. If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization. Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn’t have to do it himself. Boldface added to excerpts by QI: 1975 Winter, The CoEvolution Quarterly, Issue 8, An Abridged Collection of Interdisciplinary Laws by Conrad Schneiker, Start, Quote, Published by Point, Sausalito, California. … Continue reading Conrad Schneiker compiled and published “An Abridged Collection of Interdisciplinary Laws” which included the following three items. Quote Investigator: The earliest match located by QI appeared in “The CoEvolution Quarterly” in 1975.

Would you please explore the provenance of this saying? This dangerous situation necessitated a self-destruct command and a multi-million dollar mission failure.Ī vaguely remembered statement of exasperation reflects situations like this: A single woodpecker could destroy a vast wooden building if architects used the same design principles as computer programmers.

In the 1960s a spacecraft bound for Venus quickly veered off course because a single character in the guidance program was accidentally omitted. Small errors can cause a program to malfunction. Gerald Weinberg? Conrad Schneiker? Arthur Bloch? Clifford Stoll? Dennis Hall? Anonymous?ĭear Quote Investigator: Computer programs are not resilient.

The Cuckoo's Egg by Clifford Stoll