Sit down and be quiet. You are drunk and this is the edge of the roof. — Rumi
EppsNet Archive: Quotations
If you don’t like something change it; if you can’t change it, change the way you think about it. — Mary Engelbreit
L’audace, l’audace, toujours l’audace!
Software Development is Capable of Much, Much More
If there is one message I would like to communicate, whatever your job title and however your work is touched by software development, it is this: software development is capable of much, much more than it is currently delivering. — Kent Beck, Extreme Programming Explained Read more →
The Word “Requirement” is Just Plain Wrong
Software development has been steered wrong by the word “requirement,” defined in the dictionary as “something mandatory or obligatory.” The word carries a connotation of absolutism and permanence, inhibitors to embracing change. And the word “requirement” is just plain wrong. Out of one thousand pages of “requirements,” if you deploy a system with the right 20% or 10% or even 5%, you will likely realize all of the business benefit envisioned for the whole system. So what were the other 80%? Not “requirements”; they weren’t really mandatory or obligatory. — Kent Beck, Extreme Programming Explained Read more →
The Simplest Thing That Could Possibly Work
I ask people to think about the question, “What is the simplest thing that could possibly work?” I’m not asking you to think about what is too simple to work, just to bias your thinking toward eliminating wasted complexity. — Kent Beck, Extreme Programming Explained Read more →
Change Isn’t the Problem
Everything in software changes. The requirements change. The design changes. The business changes. The technology changes. The team changes. The team members change. The problem isn’t change, because change is going to happen; the problem, rather, is our inability to cope with change. — Kent Beck, Extreme Programming Explained Read more →
She was a girl who knew how to be happy even when she was sad. And that’s important — you know? — Marilyn Monroe
Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. — Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance
Fathers Day
The joy of Father’s Day is the joy of every day: the gift of being in the company of your children, and of living for them in the way you are meant to live . . . — Jeffrey Goldberg Read more →
I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own — a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. — Albert Einstein
Do your work, and I shall know you. — Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance
I will not hide my tastes or aversions. I will so trust that what is deep is holy, if we follow the truth, it will bring us out safe at last. — Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance
To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, that is genius. — Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance
Boring
Of course, what I think is boring must not be the same as what other people think is, since I could never stand to watch all the most popular action shows on TV, because they’re essentially the same plots and the same shots and the same cuts over and over again. Apparently, most people love watching the same basic thing, as long as the details are different. — Andy Warhol Read more →
It’s not because things are difficult that we dare not venture. It’s because we dare not venture that they are difficult. — Seneca
What I do not understand is whether the world really needed you. Who knows? Perhaps one supernumerary less would have spoiled the human tragedy. — Machado de Assis, Epitaph of a Small Winner
What you are is what you have been. What you’ll be is what you do now. — Buddha
There are two ways to slide easily through life: to believe everything or to doubt everything. Both ways save us from thinking. — Alfred Korzybski
This Is How I Avenged Myself
O crowd, whose love I coveted until the day of my death, this is how I avenged myself for your indifference: I let you buzz all around me, without hearing you. My attitude may be compared to that of Aeschylus’ Prometheus toward his tormentors. Did you think you could chain me to the rock of your triviality, of your agitations over the inconsequential? — Machado de Assis, Epitaph of a Small Winner Read more →