All non-trivial abstractions, to some degree, are leaky. -- Joel Spolsky (The Law of Leaky Abstractions)

To do something well you have to love it. So to the extent you can preserve hacking as something you love, you're likely to do it well. Try to keep the sense of wonder you had about programming at age 14. If you're worried that your current job is rotting your brain, it probably is. -- Paul Graham.

Resume writing is just like dating, or applying for a bank loan, in that nobody wants you if you're desperate. -- Steve Yegge.

A great lathe operator commands several times the wage of an average lathe operator, but a great writer of software code is worth 10,000 times the price of an average software writer. -- Bill Gates

He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. -- Matthew 5:45

While I’ve always appreciated beautiful code, I share Jonathan’s concern about studying it too much. I think studying beauty in music and painting has led us to modern classical music and painting that the majority of us just don’t get. Beauty can be seen when it emerges, but isn’t something to strive for in isolation of a larger context. In the software world, the larger context would be the utility of the software to the end user. -- [A comment on a blog]

Whenever you see a successful person you only see the public glories, never the private sacrifices to reach them. ~Vaibhav Shah

You’ve got to get up every morning with determination if you’re going to go to bed with satisfaction. ~George Lorimer

The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me. –Ayn Rand

I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions. –Stephen Covey