Various studies, predominantly by Roy Baumeister of Florida State University, show that when the frontal cortex labors hard on some cognitive task, immediately afterward individuals are more aggressive and less empathic, charitable, and honest. Metaphorically, the frontal cortex says, “Screw it. I’m tired and don’t feel like thinking about my fellow human.”

— Robert M. Sapolsky, Behave

The answer is simple. It is because [O-O] has been tied to a variety of complex languages. Instead of teaching people that O-O is a type of design, and giving them design principles, people have taught that O-O is the use of a particular tool. We can write good or bad programs with any tool. Unless we teach people how to design, the languages matter very little. The result is that people do bad designs with these languages and get very little value from them.

— Frederick P. Brooks Jr., The Mythical Man-Month

Research demonstrates that givers sink to the bottom of the success ladder. Across a wide range of important occupations, givers are at a disadvantage: they make others better off but sacrifice their own success in the process.

— Adam M. Grant Ph.D., Give and Take

Don’t you think it a good principle that one shouldn’t respect all human opinions, but only some and not others … that one should respect the good ones, but not the bad ones?… And good ones are those of people with understanding, whereas bad ones are those of people without it … So my good friend, we shouldn’t care all that much about what the populace will say of us, but about what the expert on matters of justice and injustice will say.

— Alain De Botton, The Consolations of Philosophy

While Agile may make easy problems a bit easier, it doesn’t help with the hard problems. It’s appealing to programmers, but to make software engineering more of an engineering discipline, something else is needed.

— Adam Barr, The Problem with Software