The Inmates Are Running the Asylum

“The most expensive program is one that runs once.”
“To deliver both power and pleasure to users, interaction designers think first conceptually, then in terms of behavior, and last in terms of interface.”
“Homo sapiens live in a world of probabilities … and programmers live in the world of possibilities.”

“Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.”
“The bearing of a child takes nine months, no matter how many women are assigned.”
“Build one to throw away; you will, anyhow.”
“Good cooking takes time. If you are made to wait, it is to serve you better, and to please you.”

“We have a license to reinvent the world, because modelling the real world in our machinery (i.e., domain model) is not our goal.”
“Our measure of success lies in how cleverly we invent a software reality that satisfies our application’s requirements— and not in how closely it resembles the real world.”
“If you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”
“Errors in product specification are the most costly because they ripple through all of the downstream activities.”
“No object is ever designed in isolation.”
“The sum of systems intelligence is what it knows, the actions it can perform, and the impact it has on other systems and its users.”

“Until code is in production, no value is actually being generated, because it’s merely WIP (Work In Progress).”
“Improvements of daily work are more important than doing daily work.”
“A system always has an inherent amount of disorder, and this increases over time unless work is done to maintain or reduce it.”
“Never let a good crisis go to waste.”