…computers suck because programmers create crazy complicated stuff that nobody else can understand, and complexity builds on complexity until every aspect of a program becomes unmanageable.

— Max Kanat-Alexander, Understanding Software

…the methodology is what drives the bulk of the impact. The tools themselves are not as important as the phases of excavating, understanding, documenting, and ultimately rewriting and replacing legacy systems. Tools will come and go.

— Marianne Bellotti, Kill It With Fire

Loosening up the coupling of two components usually ends with the creation of additional abstraction layers, which raises complexity on the system. Minimizing the complexity of systems tends to mean more reuse of common components, which tightens couplings.

— Marianne Bellotti, Kill It With Fire

…distrust of the fictional has indeed driven out a confidence in the true…

— Christopher Butler, Postmodernism

History is plainly not a science, and sociology, which pretends that it is, is a fraud; no genuine laws of history have been discovered, and the concepts in current use – ‘cause’, ‘accident’, ‘genius’ – explain nothing: they are merely thin disguises for ignorance.

— Isaiah Berlin, Henry Hardy, and Michael Ignatieff, The Hedgehog and the Fox