The acts of the mind, wherein it exerts its power over simple ideas, are chiefly these three: 1. Combining several simple ideas into one compound one, and thus all complex ideas are made. 2. The second is bringing two ideas, whether simple or complex, together, and setting them by one another so as to take a view of them at once, without uniting them into one, by which it gets all its ideas of relations. 3. The third is separating them from all other ideas that accompany them in their real existence: this is called abstraction, and thus all its general ideas are made. -- John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690)

What Paul does, and does very well, is to take ideas and concepts that are beautiful in the abstract, and brings them down to a real world level. That's a rare talent to find in writing these days. -- Jeff "hemos" Bates, Director, OSDN; Co-evolver, Slashdot

We tend to seek easy, single-factor explanations of success. For most important things, though, success actually requires avoiding many separate causes of failure. -- Jared Diamond

All great things require great dedication. -- Chuck Norris(?)

I think that a lot of programmers are ignoring an important point when people talk about reducing code repetition on large projects. Part of the idea is that large projects are intrinsically *wrong*. That you should be looking at making a number of smaller projects that are composable, even if you never end up reusing one of those smaller projects elsewhere. -- Dan Nugent

Good programmers use their brains, but good guidelines save us having to think out every case. -- Francis Glassborow

There is no chance, no destiny, no fate, that can hinder or control the firm resolve of a determined soul. ~Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Just when the caterpillar thought the world was ending, he turned into a butterfly. ~Proverb

Certain things catch your eye, but pursue only those that capture the heart. – Ancient Indian Proverb

If you look at what you have in life, you'll always have more. If you look at what you don't have in life, you'll never have enough. –Oprah Winfrey