Nuggets of wisdom?
- by Bill Karwin
There are many quotes from famous computer scientists that have become the wisdom that guides our profession. For example:
"Premature optimization is the root of
all evil in programming."
Donald Knuth (citing Hoare's Dictum)
"Everyone knows that debugging is
twice as hard as writing a program in
the first place. So if you're as
clever as you can be when you write
it, how will you ever debug it?"
Brian Kernighan
And so on. My question is, what are your favorite words of wisdom about programming from someone who is not famous? Was it a friend, a coworker, or a teacher, or a family member?
For example, a technical writer friend of mine said:
"You can't get the right answers unless you ask the right questions."
Thanks for all the contributions! The answer I selected was (a) specifically coding-related, and (b) stated by someone who is not technically famous (though he has a popular blog and a podcast and runs StackOverflow). I.e. he's no Bill Gates or Yogi Berra.