Bill Gates quote: “DNA is like a computer program but far, far more advanced than any software ever created.”

“If we ever talk to aliens, their civilisation will be far more advanced than ours (because of distances involved). They won't be religious!”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

https://twitter.com/RichardDawkins/status/435344902591770624 (17 February 2014)
Twitter

“Imagine creating a huge software program that can only be tested in little pieces on a computer that is slightly different from what it is supposed to run on. However, when you do run it as a whole on the actual computer for the first time, it must run almost flawlessly without a single significant bug. When is the last time you saw a software program do that?”

Elon Musk (1971) South African-born American entrepreneur

Conversation: Elon Musk on Wired Science (2007)

“In the vastness of the Cosmos there must be other civilizations far older and more advanced than ours.”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator

0 min 45 sec
Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (1990 Update), Encyclopedia Galactica [Episode 12]

“The major cause [of the software crisis] is that the machines have become several orders of magnitude more powerful! To put it quite bluntly: as long as there were no machines, programming was no problem at all; when we had a few weak computers, programming became a mild problem, and now we have gigantic computers, programming has become an equally gigantic problem. In this sense the electronic industry has not solved a single problem, it has only created them, it has created the problem of using its products.”

Edsger W. Dijkstra (1930–2002) Dutch computer scientist

1970s, The Humble Programmer (1972)

“Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.”

Douglas Adams (1952–2001) English writer and humorist

“Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.”

Rick Cook (1944) American writer

The Wizardry Compiled (1989)

“Computer programs are the most intricate, delicately balanced and finely interwoven of all the products of human industry to date. They are machines with far more moving parts than any engine: the parts don't wear out, but they interact and rub up against one another in ways the programmers themselves cannot predict.”

James Gleick (1954) American author, journalist, and biographer

James Gleick (2002). What just happened: a chronicle from the information frontier, p. 19 cited in: George Stepanek (2005), Software Project Secrets: Why Software Projects Fail, p. 10

“The human capacity for burden is like bamboo- far more flexible than you'd ever believe at first glance.”

Jodi Picoult My Sister's Keeper

Source: My Sister's Keeper

“I fear —as far as I can tell— that most undergraduate degrees in computer science these days are basically Java vocational training. I’ve heard complaints from even mighty Stanford University with its illustrious faculty that basically the undergraduate computer science program is little more than Java certification.”

Alan Kay (1940) computer scientist

ACM Queue A Conversation with Alan Kay Vol. 2, No. 9 - Dec/Jan 2004-2005 http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=1039523
2000s, A Conversation with Alan Kay, 2004–05

“Far too often, "software engineering" is neither engineering nor about software.”

Bjarne Stroustrup (1950) Danish computer scientist, creator of C++

Bjarne Stroustrup's FAQ: Did you really say that?, 2011-04-11 http://www.stroustrup.com/bs_faq.html#really-say-that,

“DNA is like a computer program but far, far more advanced than any software ever created.”

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