

The Butler Lampson interview from Programmers at Work - gruseom
http://programmersatwork.wordpress.com/butler-lampson-1986/

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_"Nobody knows how to build really complicated hardware systems, so designing
hardware tends to be simpler. Software is much more complicated."_

For those of you who, like me, have wondered how processors and other complex
hardware are so reliable, while software is disgraceful, he's probably got the
answer.

 _"Sometimes I think that the goals people are trying to reach are just too
much to ask for. Programmers often lose sight of the fact that the problems in
building software systems arise because what they are trying to do is just too
hard. They believe the computer is a universal engine that can do anything.
It’s very easy to be seduced into the proposition that a group of one or five
or ten or fifty or a thousand programmers can make the computer do anything.
That’s clearly not right."_

Interesting...

