Fernando J. Corbató

1926–2019 · American computer scientist

Topics: programming, software design, software engineering, debugging

• The use of the high level language made each programmer a factor of 5 to 10 more productive in a coding sense and more concerned with the semantics than the syntax of modules.

  — Fernando J. Corbató

• Because one has to be an optimist to begin an ambitious project, it is not surprising that underestimation of completion time is the norm.

  — Fernando J. Corbató

• To our dismay, users who had been enduring several hour waits between jobs run under batch processing were suddenly restless when response times were more than a second.

  — Fernando J. Corbató

• Design bugs are often subtle and occur by evolution with early assumptions being forgotten as new features or uses are added to systems.

  — Fernando J. Corbató