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]

Getting back to failing early, I've learned it's important to completely fail. Get fired. Shoot the project, then burn its corpse. Melt the CVS repository and microwave the backup CDs. When things go wrong, I've often tried to play the hero from start to finish. Guess what? Some projects are doomed no matter what. Some need skills I don't possess. And some need a fresh face. -- Reginald Braithwaite

It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages. -- Friedrich Nietzsche

Thus, programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute. -- Alan J. Perlis

As builders and creators finding the perfect solution should not be our main goal. We should find the perfect problem. -- Isaac (blog comment)

Abstraction is a form of data compression: absolutely necessary, because human short-term memory is so small, but the critically important aspect of abstraction is the algorithm that gets you from the name back to the "uncompressed" details. -- Bruce Wilder (blog post comment)

All progress takes place outside the comfort zone. ~Michael John Bobak

A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new. – Albert Einstein

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

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. –Robert Frost