The word “essay” comes from the French verb “essayer”, which means “to try”. An essay, in the original sense, is something you write to try to figure something out. This happens in software too. I think some of the best programs were essays, in the sense that the authors didn’t know when they started exactly what they were trying to write.
Paul Graham
Quotes
Argue with idiots, and you become an idiot
Argue with idiots, and you become an idiot
Paul Graham
If debugging is the process of removing software bugs, then programming must be the process of putting them in
Edsger Dijkstra
Simplify everything
This much seems clear: either you can adapt sophisticated, complex systems to try to manage the complications, or you can simplify everything.
Ricardo Semler
Bureaucracies
Bureaucracies are built by and for people who busy themselves proving they are necessary, especially when they suspect they aren’t
Ricardo Semler
With few exceptions
With few exceptions, rules and regulations only serve to:
1. Divert attention from a company’s objectives.
2. Provide a false sense of security for executives.
3. Create work for bean counters.
4. Teach men to stone dinosaurs and start fires with sticks.
Ricardo Semler
Twenty years from now
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.
Mark Twain
What gets us into trouble
What gets us into trouble is not what we don’t know. It’s what we know for sure that just ain’t so.
Mark Twain
Easy change
For each desired change, make the change easy (warning: this may be hard), then make the easy change
Kent Beck
Game of insight
“Software development is a game of insight, and insight comes to the prepared, rested, relaxed mind.”
Kent Beck