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]

Mistakes were made. -- Ronald Reagan

It’s a problem if the design doesn’t let you add features at a later date. If you have to redo a program, the hours you spend can cause you to lose your competitive edge. A flexible program demonstrates the difference between a good designer and someone who is just getting a piece of code out. -- Gary Kildall (inventor of CP/M, one of the first OS for the micro).

Courage is grace under pressure. -- Ernest Hemingway

A hacker on a roll may be able to produce–in a period of a few months–something that a small development group (say, 7-8 people) would have a hard time getting together over a year. IBM used to report that certain programmers might be as much as 100 times as productive as other workers, or more. -- Peter Seebach

And if you go too far up, abstraction-wise, you run out of oxygen. Sometimes smart thinkers just don't know when to stop, and they create these absurd, all-encompassing, high-level pictures of the universe that are all good and fine, but don't actually mean anything at all. -- Joel Spolsky

Be miserable. Or motivate yourself. Whatever has to be done, it’s always your choice. ~Wayne Dyer

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away. –Maya Angelou

The number one reason people fail in life is because they listen to their friends, family, and neighbors. ~Napoleon Hill

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