Kapor on Software Design

From Mitchell Kapor 1990 article titled "A Software Design Manifesto"

"One of the main reasons most computer software is so abysmal is that it's not designed at all, but merely engineered. Another reason is that implementors often place more emphasis on a program's internal construction than on its external design, despite the fact that as much as 75 percent of the code in a modern program deals with the interface to the user."

"The Roman architecture critic Vitruvius advanced the notion that well-designed buildings were those which exhibited firmness, commodity, and delight.

The same might be said of good software. Firmness: A program should not have any bugs which inhibit its function. Commodity: A program should be suitable for the purposes for which it was intended. Delight: The experience of using the program should be a pleasurable one. Here we have the beginnings of a theory of design for software."

"The software designer is concerned primarily with the overall conception of the product. Dan Bricklin's invention of the electronic spreadsheet is one of the crowning achievements of software design. It is the metaphor of the spreadsheet itself, its tableau of rows and columns with their precisely interrelated labels, numbers, and formulas -- rather than the user interface of VisiCalc -- or which he will be remembered. The "look and feel" of a product is but one part of its design."