Software is largely a service industry operating under the persistent but unfounded delusion that it is a manufacturing industry

Programmer time is expensive; conserve it in preference to machine time

Smart data structures and dumb code works a lot better than the other way around.

A software system is transparent when you can look at it and immediately see what is going on. It is simple when what is going on is uncomplicated enough for a human brain to reason about all the potential cases without strain

Linux evolved in a completely different way. From nearly the beginning, it was rather casually hacked on by huge numbers of volunteers coordinating only through the Internet.

Equally, the Internet interprets attempts at proprietary control as threats and mobilizes to defeat them.

It is widely grokked that cats have the hacker nature