A programmer who truly sees his program as an extension of his own ego is not going to be trying to find all the errors in that program. On the contr… - Gerald M. Weinberg

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A programmer who truly sees his program as an extension of his own ego is not going to be trying to find all the errors in that program. On the contrary, he is going to be trying to prove that the program is correct — even if this means the oversight of errors which are monstrous to another eye. All programmers are familiar with the symptoms of this dissonance resolution — -in others, of course.

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About Gerald M. Weinberg

Gerald M. Weinberg (October 27, 1933 – August 7, 2018) was an American computer scientist, author and teacher of the psychology and anthropology of computer software development.

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Jane easily shifts among activities — testing for discovery, pinpointing, locating, determining significance, repairing, troubleshooting, and testing to learn. As long as she continues to serve her customers, it doesn't really matter which task she performs at any given time.

Although technology often leads science in discovery, the philosophy of technology is usually drawn from the scientific philosophy of its time. In our time, the technology of machines has drawn its inspiration from mechanics, dealing with complexity by reducing the number of relevant parts. The technology of government, on the other hand, has drawn upon statistical mechanics, creating simplicity by dealing only with people in the structureless mass, as interchangeable units, and taking averages.

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Separation of function is not to be despised, but neither should it be exalted. Separation is not an unbreakable law, but a convenience for overcoming inadequate human abilities, whether in science or engineering. As D'Arcy Thompson, one of the spiritual fathers of the general systems movement, said: As we analyze a thing into its parts or into its properties, we tend to magnify these, to exaggerate their apparent independence, and to hide from ourselves (at least for a time) the essential integrity and individuality of the composite whole. We divided the body into its organs, the skeleton into its bones, as in very much the same fashion we make a subjective analysis of the mind, according to the teaching of psychology, into component factors: but we know very well that judgement and knowledge, courage or gentleness, love or fear, have no separate existence, but are somehow mere manifestations, or imaginary coefficients, of a most complex integral.10 The

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