Conceptual integrity is the most important consideration in system design.

A basic principle of data processing teaches the folly of trying to maintain independent files in synchonism.

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

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

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

Predictability and great design are not friends.

Well over half of the time you spend working on a project (on the order of 70 percent) is spent thinking, and no tool, no matter how advanced, can think for you. Consequently, even if a tool did everything except the thinking for you - if it wrote 100 percent of the code, wrote 100 percent of the documentation, did 100 percent of the testing, burned the CD-ROMs, put them in boxes, and mailed them to your customers - the best you could hope for would be a 30 percent improvement in productivity. In order to do better than that, you have to change the way you think.