Engineers tend to overestimate the value of order and neatness. The only thing that really matters with a computer system is its effectiveness at performing its practical application.

— Marianne Bellotti, Kill It With Fire

What was most important wasn’t knowing the future—it was knowing how to react appropriately to the information available at each point in time.

— Ray Dalio, Principles

Purged of potential trigger words and phrases, is a discussion still philosophical?

— Anja Publications, Philosophy Now

After surveying more than 4000 projects, Capers Jones reported that the software industry on the whole is probably about 35 percent efficient (Jones 1994). The other 65 percent of the time is spent on harmful or unproductive activities such as use of productivity tools that don’t work, repair of carelessly developed modules, work lost because of lack of configuration control, and so on.

— Steve McConnell, Rapid Development

…if you get to the point where if you were to remove anything more it would not work any more—at this point it is beautiful.

— Peter Seibel, Coders at Work