It's easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission. -- Rear Admiral Dr. Grace Hopper

No problem should ever have to be solved twice. -- Eric S. Raymond, How to become a hacker

Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all sentences short or avoid all detail and treat subjects only in outline, but that every word tell. -- William Strunk, Jr. (The Elements of Style)

Being a programmer is the same way. The only way to be a good programmer is to write code. When you realize you haven't been writing much code lately, and it seems like all you do is brag about code you wrote in the past, and people start looking at you funny while you're shooting your mouth off, realize it's because they know. They might not even know they know, but they know. So, yes, doing what you love brings success, and by all means, throw yourself a nice big party, buy yourself a nice car, soak up the adulation of an adoring crowd. Then shut the fuck up and get back to work. -- Sincerity Theory

Simplicity and pragmatism beat complexity and theory any day. -- Dennis (blog comment)

A guideline in the process of stepwise refinement should be the principle to decompose decisions as much as possible, to untangle aspects which are only seemingly interdependent, and to defer those decisions which concern details of representation as long as possible. -- Niklaus Wirth

Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up. –Pablo Picasso

We become what we think about. –Earl Nightingale

If the wind will not serve, take to the oars. –Latin Proverb

Do what you can, where you are, with what you have. –Teddy Roosevelt