If something seems possible, that's probably because someone is already doing it. When something seems that it can't possibly work, nobody tries it. Real innovation happens when someone tries anyway, overlooking an obvious flaw, and finds a way to make an idea work.
Joel SpolskyIndeed one of the best ways to deflect attacks is to make it look like they're succeeding. It's the software equivalent of playing dead.
Joel SpolskyIf you are a programmer working in 2006 and you donโt know the basics of characters, character sets, encodings, and Unicode, and I catch you, Iโm going to punish you by making you peel onions for six months in a submarine.
Joel SpolskyThere's a subtle reason that programmers always want to throw away the code and start over. The reason is that they think the old code is a mess. [...] The reason that they think the old code is a mess is because of a cardinal, fundamental law of programming: It's harder to read code than to write it.
Joel Spolsky