Program construction consists of a sequence of refinement steps.

Programs should be written and polished until they acquire publication quality.

The belief that complex systems require armies of designers and programmers is wrong. A system that is not understood in its entirety, or at least to a significant degree of detail by a single individual, should probably not be built.

Indeed, the woes of Software Engineering are not due to lack of tools, or proper management, but largely due to lack of sufficient technical competence.

It is evidently necessary to generate and test candidates for solutions in some systematic manner.

Software is getting slower more rapidly than hardware becomes faster.

But active programming consists of the design of new programs, rather than contemplation of old programs.