If you treat your beta-testers as if they're your most valuable resource, they will respond by becoming your most valuable resource.

Microsoft is not the problem. Microsoft is the symptom.

With enough eyes, all bugs are shallow.

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

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

Rushing to optimize before the bottlenecks are known may be the only error to have ruined more designs than feature creep. From tortured code to incomprehensible data layouts, the results of obsessing about speed or memory or disk usage at the expense of transparency and simplicity are everywhere. They spawn innumerable bugs and cost millions of man-hours - often, just to get marginal gains in the use of some resource much less expensive than debugging time

Grovelling is not a substitute for doing your homework.