We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil. – C.A.R. Hoare, quoted by Donald Knuth
When you catch bugs early, you also get fewer compound bugs. Compound bugs are two separate bugs that interact: you trip going downstairs, and when you reach for the handrail it comes off in your hand. – Paul Graham, “The Other Road Ahead,” 2001
Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning. – Rich Cook
That is to say, epic poetry has been invented many times and independently but, as the needs which prompted the invention have been broadly similar, so the invention itself has been. – Lascelles Abercrombie
Friendship is Love with jewels on, but without either flowers or veil. – Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers
So shall I fight, so shall I tread, In this long war beneath the stars; So shall a glory wreathe my head, So shall I faint and show the scars, Until this case, this clogging mould, Be smithied all to kingly gold. – John Edward Masefield
