Google’s massive, internal study of what distinguishes high-performing teams from low-performing ones: Not team cohesion, motivation, or average IQ, but rather frequent turn-taking in conversations and high social sensitivity toward what team members are thinking and feeling.

— David Komlos and David Benjamin, Cracking Complexity

I don’t do the thing where you figure out your life’s purpose and then come up with 5-year plans to support that, your 2-year plans to support your 5-year plans, and so on. You know what’s important to you, and if something is a priority you’re already doing it.

— Brennen Reece, Productivity for the Depressive Polymath

The problem is that once you have done away with the ability to make judgments as to right and wrong, true and false, etc., there’s no real culture left.

— Neal Stephenson, In the Beginning…Was the Command Line

The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offence.

— Edsger W.Dijkstra, How Do We Tell Truths That Might Hurt?

Numerous “learn to code” boosters emphasize that “programming is fun.” I don’t agree; my sympathies are more in line with those expressed by Italian researcher Walter Vannini in his article “Coding Is Not ‘Fun’, It’s Technically and Ethically Complex.”

— Jonathan E. Steinhart, The Secret Life of Programs