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

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.

Any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad hoc, informally specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of Common Lisp. -- Philip Greenspun (Greenspun's Tenth Rule)

What Paul does, and does very well, is to take ideas and concepts that are beautiful in the abstract, and brings them down to a real world level. That's a rare talent to find in writing these days. -- Jeff "hemos" Bates, Director, OSDN; Co-evolver, Slashdot

Sound methodology can empower and liberate the creative mind; it cannot inflame or inspire the drudge. -- Frederick P. Brooks, No Sliver Bullet.

New eyes have X-ray vision. [someone that hasn't written it is more likely to spot the bug. "someone" can be you after a break] -- William S. Annis

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

Knowledge is being aware of what you can do. Wisdom is knowing when not to do it. ~Anonymous

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent. ~Eleanor Roosevelt

When you stop chasing the wrong things you give the right things a chance to catch you. ~Lolly Daskal