Systems program building is an entropy-decreasing process, hence inherently metastable. Program maintenance is an entropy-increasing process, and even its most skillful execution only delays the subsidence of the system into unfixable obsolescence.

How does a project get to be a year behind schedule? One day at a time.

The management question, therefore, is not whether to build a pilot system and throw it away. You will do that. Hence plan to throw one away; you will, anyhow.

Show me your flowcharts and conceal your tables, and I shall continue to be mystified. Show me your tables, and I won't usually need your flowcharts; they'll be obvious.

Systematically identity top designers as early as possible. The best are often not the most experienced.

All programmers are optimists. Perhaps this modern sorcery especially attracts those who believe in happy endings and fairy godmothers. Perhaps the hundreds of nitty frustrations drive away all but those who habitually focus on the end goal. Perhaps it is merely that computers are young, programmers are younger, and the young are always optimists.

Even the best planning is not so omniscient as to get it right the first time.