What is actually happening, I am afraid, is that we all tell each
other and ourselves that software engineering techniques should be
improved considerably, because there is a crisis.  But there are a few
boundary conditions which apparently have to be satisfied:

    1. We may not change our thinking habits.
    2. We may not change our programming tools.
    3. We may not change our hardware.
    4. We may not change our tasks.
    5. We may not change the organizational set-up
       in which the work has to be done.

Now under these five immutable boundary conditions, we have to try to
improve matters. This is utterly ridiculous.

Edsger W. Dijkstra, on receiving the ACM Turing Award in 1972