Most monoliths will eventually have to be rethought and redesigned, but trying to pinpoint when is like trying to predict the exact moment you will outgrow a favorite sweater.

— Marianne Bellotti, Kill It With Fire

if you led the most unrepentant optimist through the hospitals, military wards, and surgical theatres, through the prisons, torture chambers and slave stalls, through battlefields and places of judgment, and then open for him all the dark dwellings of misery that hide from cold curiosity, then he too would surely come to see the nature of this best of all possible worlds.

— Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation

We’re not victims of AI taking over programming. We’re not heroes saving the profession from artificial intelligence. We’re just humans repeating historical patterns with slightly better tools and considerably less self-awareness.

— Krzyś, The Junior Developer Extinction: We’re All Building the Next Programming Dark Age

So in practice big companies only get to develop technology in fields where large capital requirements prevent startups from competing with them…

— Paul Graham, Hackers & Painters

Most individuals distort reality based on their history, culture, and personality. Very few individuals see reality perfectly. That is why teams are so important. If we all speak candidly and don’t withhold facts, thoughts, feelings, or sensations, it greatly increases the probability that collectively we can see reality more accurately.

— Jim Dethmer, Diana Chapman, and Kaley Klemp, The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership