True and abiding happiness in work comes from being deeply engaged in solving a problem with talented people you know are also deeply engaged in solving it, and from knowing that the customer loves the product or service you all have worked so hard to make.

— Patty McCord, Powerful

If you are really interested in the performance of your code, don’t guess about what will be fast and what will be slow; measure it!

— David Farley, Modern Software Engineering

A lot of overengineering has been justified in the name of flexibility. But more often than not, excessive layers of abstraction and indirection get in the way.

— Eric Evans, Domain-Driven Design

Much of what has been espoused in software engineering in the last twenty years—Agile development, unit testing, the debate about errors versus exceptions, and the benefits of different programming languages—has been presented without any experimental backing.

— Adam Barr, The Problem With Software

A sense of injustice may lead to murder, or to a ground-breaking work of economic theory. Envy may lead to bitterness, or to a decision to compete with a rival and the production of a masterpiece.

— Alain De Botton, The Consolations of Philosophy