We control complexity by building abstractions that hide details when appropriate. We control complexity by establishing conventional interfaces that enable us to construct systems by combining standard, well-understood pieces in a ``mix and match'' way. We control complexity by establishing new languages for describing a design, each of which emphasizes particular aspects of the design and deemphasizes others. -- Alan J. Perlis

Measure everything you can about the product, and you'll start seeing patterns. -- Max Levchin, PayPal founder, Talk at StartupSchool2007

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

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)

Considering the current sad state of our computer programs, software development is clearly still a black art, and cannot yet be called an engineering discipline. -- Bill Clinton

A guideline in the process of stepwise refinement should be the principle to decompose decisions as much as possible, to untangle aspects which are only seemingly interdependent, and to defer those decisions which concern details of representation as long as possible. -- Niklaus Wirth

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

You can never cross the ocean until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore. –Christopher Columbus

Either you run the day, or the day runs you. –Jim Rohn

Don’t raise your voice, improve your argument. ~Anonymous