In almost all cases, I’m opposed to setting aside time for refactoring. In my view refactoring is not an activity you set aside time to do. Refactoring is something you do all the time in little bursts.

Comparing to another activity is useful if it helps you formulate questions, it's dangerous when you use it to justify answers.

When to use iterative development? You should use iterative development only on projects that you want to succeed.

One of the big dangers is to pretend that you can follow a predictable process when you can't.

Why is composing symphonies tough? I don't know. It's just very few people in the world can do it well. And I think that's the case with upfront design. It is very hard to do well.

Now I'm a pretty lazy person and am prepared to work quite hard in order to avoid work.

One of the things I've been trying to do is look for simpler or rules underpinning good or bad design. I think one of the most valuable rules is avoid duplication. "Once and only once" is the Extreme Programming phrase.