The greatest challenge to any thinker is stating the problem in a way that will allow a solution. -- Bertrand Russell

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).

If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it's a duck. -- Official definition of "duck typing"

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.

We now come to the decisive step of mathematical abstraction: we forget about what the symbols stand for. ...[The mathematician] need not be idle; there are many operations which he may carry out with these symbols, without ever having to look at the things they stand for. -- Hermann Weyl, The Mathematical Way of Thinking

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. -- Benjamin Franklin

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

Life is what we make it, always has been, always will be. –Grandma Moses

A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him. ~David Brinkley

Blessed are those who can give without remembering and take without forgetting. ~Anonymous