Quotes

Elegance

Elegance always pays off. In the short term it might seem like it takes much longer to come up with a truly graceful solution to a problem, but when it works the first time and easily adapts to new situations instead of requiring hours, days, or months of struggle, you'll see the rewards (even if no one can measure them). And there's nothing that matches the feeling that comes from knowing you've got an amazing design. Resist the urge to hurry; it will only slow you down.

  • Eckel, Bruce. 1998. Thinking in Java. Prentice Hall PTR, Upper Saddle River, NJ. p 1056.

The benefits of Object-Oriented Analysis, Design, and Development

Casting the solution in the same terms as the problem is tremendously beneficial because you don't need a lot of intermediate models to get from a description of the problem to a description of the solution. With objects, the type hierarchy is the primary model, so you go directly from the description of the system in the real world to the description of the system in code. Indeed, one of the difficulties people have with object-oriented design is that it's too simple to get from the beginning to the end. A mind trained to look for complex solutions is often stumped by this simplicity at first.

Premature Optimization

Donald Knuth observed that: premature optimization is the root of all evil.

How to treat software developers (and employees in general)

Provided it makes some minimum of sense, most people do what they are encouraged to do. In particular, if in the context of a software project you reward certain ways of operating and penalize others, only exceptional programmers and designers will risk their careers to do what they consider right in the face of management opposition, indifference, and red tape.

In Short: An organization that treats its programmers as morons will soon have programmers that are willing and able to act like morons only.

The Roman Rule

The one who says it cannot be done should never interrupt the one who is doing it.

  • Unknown.

Use the talent you possess

Use what talents you possess; the wood would be very silent if no birds sang there except those that sang best.