Douglas Johnston, MeSH

Title:

Technical Information Specialist

Office:

National Library of Medicine

National Institutes of Health

Bldg. 38A, Room B2E17

8600 Rockville Pike

Bethesda MD 20894 USA

Telephone:

(301) 402-0305 (voice)

(301) 402-2002 (fax)

Electronic mail:

johnston@nlm.nih.gov

Doug joined NLM in 1986 and provides general computer support.

Doug's computer quotes. (No endorsement by NLM is implied.)

• ... the best computer programs are the ones in which the computer itself "disappears," in which you work directly on the problem without having to be aware of the computer.
  Donald Norman. The Psychology of Everyday Things (Basic Books, 1988, p. 180)
• Planning a software task takes twice as long as coding.
  Testing a software task takes three times as long as coding.
  

  Many of the classical problems of developing software products derive from this essential complexity and its nonlinear increases with size.

  The hardest single part of building a software system is deciding precisely what to build.

  Frederick Brooks. The Mythical Man-Month (2nd ed., Addison-Wesley, 1995, pp. 20, 183, 199)
  

Last updated: 22 June 2001
First published: 22 June 2001
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