There was a young man who, in his youth, professed a desire to become a great writer. When asked to define “great,” he said, “I want to write stuff that the whole world will read, stuff that people will react to on a truly emotional level. Stuff that will make them scream, cry, and howl in pain and anger.” He now works at Microsoft, writing error messages.

— Gerald M. Weinberg, Fiona Charles, Keats Kirsch, Dani Weinberg and Earl Everett, Weinberg on Writing

The keys to flow: There’s a clear challenge that fully engages your attention; you have the skills to meet the challenge; and you get immediate feedback about how you are doing at each step (the progress principle).

— Jonathan Haidt, The Happiness Hypothesis

By offering individuals the opportunity for heroic engagements with fate, gambling fulfilled an existential need for “action” or consequential activity in an increasingly bureaucratic society that deprived its citizens of the opportunity to express their character in public settings of risk.

— Natasha Dow Schüll, Addiction

The word Null entered computing jargon in 1965, when Sir Tony Hoare introduced it in ALGOL W as a way of marking missing data, ‘simply because it was so easy to implement’. He later repented and called it his ‘billion-dollar mistake’.

— Gojko Adzic, Humans vs Computers

success is largely a matter of Avoiding the Most Likely Ways to Fail[d. ], and since every Bug advances us significantly along that path, we may hearken back to the advice given in the Preface and urge the following Policy: CHERISH YOUR BUGS. STUDY THEM

— John Gall and D.H.Gall, Systemantics. The Systems Bible