According to wikiquote[0], it is from The Mythical Man-Month. Also, just to be clear, this is a paraphrasing of the original with the substitutions as mentione

According to wikiquote[0], it is from The Mythical Man-Month. Also, just to be clear, this is a paraphrasing of the original with the substitutions as mentioned in the original comment. The initial context was of software data structures and software algorithms, emphasizing that the data structures are by far the more important. [0] https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Fred_Brooks https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Fred_Brooks