A good architect, for example, does not begin by creating a design that he then imposes on the users, but by studying the intended users and figuring out what they need.

— Paul Graham, Hackers & Painters

There’s a certain irony in the fact that so many systems that correctly implement valuable behaviors end up with a structure that is so poor that it negates that value and makes the system worthless.

— Robert C. Martin, Clean Craftsmanship

After a while, getting what you want all the time is very close to not getting what you want all the time.

— Julian Barnes, A History of the World in 10½ Chapters

Coding skill is just one small part of writing correct programs. The majority of the task is the subject of the three previous columns: problem definition, algorithm design, and data structure selection. If you perform those tasks well, writing correct code is usually easy.

— Jon Bentley, Programming Pearls

Imagine the benefits of a single computer language! Employers would not have to hunt for programmers who know Calypso-lang. Books, articles, and research papers could be published with code, and every programmer would understand them. The number of frameworks and libraries would vastly shrink. The number of platforms you’d have to port your systems to would shrink as well. A single language would be a remarkable boon to the software businesses, to programmers, to researchers, and to users.

— Robert C. Martin, We, Programmers