41–50 of 60 posts
The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all. - Ecclesiastes Life does not always make sense, sometimes best efforts and best preparation fail. That is okay
"It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life."
The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all. - Ecclesiastes Life does not always make sense, sometimes best efforts and best preparation fail. That is okay
Not tech related: Don't complain about being bored. Bored/boring means that people around you (e.g. family) aren't dying.
1. Make it work, then make it work well
2. The user doesn’t give a shit how it’s made
3. If you can’t measure it you can’t improve it
4. The problem is more important than the solution
5. Write code that is easy to delete
6. Buy right buy once
_ « if you can not afford to buy it, you certainly can not afford to build it »_ To eager business leads saying that a software or service is too expensive and we should build it internally instead...
Many SAP and Oracle-software (not the DB, the other stuff) implementations fail, and take years to do so, after costing as much as building in house would have (and likely succeeded).
For some things, it's true - but I wouldn't consider this "generally applicable wisom"
Overabstraction is generally much worse than underabstraction.
The right level of abstraction is worth it's 'wc -l' in gold.
Murphy was an optimist. Everything that can go wrong, will, but at the most inopportune time (while demoing for the biggest client ever, for example).
The new thing can save you 10% at best, but easily cost you 50% (in delays, unexpected costs, bugs, ...); Prefer boring and established.
Everything has a context. "readability" is not absolute, it depends on your target audience.
Your dev/test machine should be slightly weaker than your user's to guarantee a usable product.
Most people decide if something was brave or foolish only in retrospect.
The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago, but the next best time is today. That's extremely true for refactoring/code changes/decision making in general.
Praised be those who have nothing to say, and nevertheless remain silent (supposedly a German saying). Keep your descriptions short and to the point, don't go on rambling.
Most people, most of the time, aren't rational, but rationalizing (part of the problem is that we really believe the stories we tell ourselves, even though they are mostly post-hoc rationalization). Is that really why you did that?
Most people like to complain and blame things they can't change, but fear acting on things that they can change.
The game is mostly rigged against you (unless you are the incumbent. Then, the game is rigged by and for you - but you already knew that ...).
History is written by the victors, so take anything you weren't there to witness with a grain of salt -- including science history. (e.g. Barbara McClintock and Danny Shechtman were pariahs until they weren't, but evidence is being whitewashed). Extremely true for office and dev politics. And there are always politics.
Those who cast the votes determine nothing. Those who count the votes determine everything (supposedly by J.G.Stalin). Are you really a decision maker, or just imagine yourself to be?
I've got a bunch more, but these are some of my favorites ( after reading that it was for a mentee relationship, I had to remove some) - You impact your environment, regardless of your participation, and even your presence - Perception is a weak approximation for reality - Value the opportunity to be wrong, because eventually you'll lose the privilege of being told so - The greatest barrier to getting things done, is…