[Ads-l] Request Coevolution Quarterly 1975, Weinberg's Law - If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs . . .

[ADSGarson O'Toole]

This request has now been satisfied thanks to Ivan Van Laningham, I
will create a Quote Investigator article in the coming days.
Garson

On Wed, Sep 18, 2019 at 12:48 PM ADSGarson O'Toole
<adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> A request to explore the provenance of the following expression was sent to me:
>
> [Begin excerpt]
> Weinberg's Law
> If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then
> the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.
> [End excerpt]
>
> The earliest match I could find was a snippet match in the Google
> Books database. Based on examining snippets, extracting text,
> searching bibliographies, and using guesswork here is the possible
> metadata (incomplete).
>
> Year: 1975
> Periodical: The Coevolution Quarterly
> Number 8
> Article: An Abridged Collection of Interdisciplinary Laws
> Author: Conrad Schneiker
> Start Page 138, Quote Page 139
>
> I would like to obtain scans of this article together with scans of
> the cover page, table of contents, and the page giving the publisher
> data. The goal (as always) is determining complete and accurate
> citations.
>
> It appears that an archive of content from The Whole Earth Review and
> The Coevolution Quarterly was available on a website in the past, but
> the database appears to be broken now.
>
> http://wholeearth.com/history-coevolution-quarterly.php
> http://wholeearth.com/index.php
>
> Do you have access to 1975 issues of The Coevolution Quarterly? Would
> you be willing to help?
>
> This saying was placed into the Unix fortune file, but I do not know when.
>
> Here is a book citation in 1977.
>
> [ref] 1977, Murphy's Law and Other Reasons Why Things Go Wrong! by
> Arthur Bloch, Chapter Expertsmanship, Quote Page 81, Price Stern Sloan
> Publishers Inc., Los Angeles, California. (Verified with scans) [/ref]
>
> [Begin excerpt]
> WEINBERG'S SECOND LAW:
> If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then
> the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.
> [End excerpt]
>
> Garson O'Toole

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