A second example of wishful thinking is to believe that learning how to program in a computer science course or a coding-intensive workshop will enable you to solve problems in any field that uses computation. No, you will need to learn something about the other field too.

— Peter J. Denning and Matti Tedre, Computational Thinking

…fear guards the line between the zone of excellence and the ultimate zone of genius.

— Jim Dethmer, Diana Chapman, and Kaley Klemp, The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership

Looking down into the bits, lesser engineers with larger egos might attempt to show off, to infuse the mechanism with art, to create some wonder of engineering, a gold inlaid, filigreed marvel of complexity. The inner strength of Heart’s team was its restraint, its maturity. This was no place for signature craftsmanship.

— Matthew Lyon and Katie Hafner, Where Wizards Stay Up Late

Large companies were originally skeptical about using open source software. Who would fix the bugs? This is somewhat ludicrous; if you’ve ever reported a bug to Microsoft, Apple, or any other large company, you know how much attention it gets.

— Jonathan E. Steinhart, The Secret Life of Programs

If we rely on cosmic blasts of cleverness to solve our problems, we’ll be waiting for eons. To get anything done, we need to convert the mystical into the mechanical, the fluid into the fixed, the ineffable into the plainly effable.

— Ben Orlin, Change Is the Only Constant