Adjusting to the requirement for perfection is, I think, the most difficult part of learning to program.
Fred BrooksImproving your process won't move you from good to great design. It'll move you from bad to average.
Fred BrooksMen and months are interchangeable commodities only when a task can be partitioned among many workers with no communication among them.
Fred BrooksObserve that for the programmer, as for the chef, the urgency of the patron may govern the scheduled completion of the task, but it cannot govern the actual completion. An omelette, promised in two minutes, may appear to be progressing nicely. But when it has not set in two minutes, the customer has two choices - wait or eat it raw. Software customers have had the same choices.
Fred Brooks