Mediocre design provably wastes the world's resources, corrupts the environment, affects international competitiveness. Design is important.

Improving your process won't move you from good to great design. It'll move you from bad to average.

A computer program is a message from a man to a machine. The rigidly marshaled syntax and the scrupulous definitions all exist to make intention clear to the dumb engine.

The boss must first distinguish between action information and status information. He must discipline himself not to act on problems his managers can solve, and never to act on problems when he is explicitly reviewing status.

Einstein repeatedly argued that there must be simplified explanations of nature, because God is not capricious or arbitrary. No such faith comforts the software engineer.

A scientist builds in order to learn; an engineer learns in order to build.

Adjusting to the requirement for perfection is, I think, the most difficult part of learning to program.