What's Your Favorite IT Quote or Rule? And How Does It Influence Your Work?

Quotes and rules can be great sources of inspiration and guidance in the world of IT. Some of our favorites here at DEV are the Agile Manifesto and this quote by Grace Hopper:

The most dangerous phrase in the language is 'we've always done it this way.

Share your favorite quotes and rules and discuss how they've helped shape your approach to IT and technology.

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Comments

[Valeria]

“Fail fast”

Some things just don’t work out the way you intend them too, but it’s essential to at least give it a quick try. Because the faster you fail - the faster you’ll learn something. And the more you fail - the more you learn!

[FJones]

Paraphrasing Johnson & Fowler: "Software architecture is a shared understanding of the things that are important."
This really encapsulates everything about my approach to software architecture:

1. Make sure everyone understands how we want the software to be built.
2. Focus on the important stuff. Focus on the things that are hard to change later, focus on exit strategies for when you do need to change them.
3. Don't get lost in details. Strict adherence to patterns doesn't solve problems. Patterns are guidelines. Formalizing every piece of the architecture makes you lose sight of the bigger picture - the important stuff.

[Ben Halpern]

The campsite rule: Leave the code cleaner than you found it.

[Ryan Brown]

Any probability repeated often enough becomes a certainty.
Comes into play when i hear things like: "But that is unlikely to happen" or "It's too rare to consider".
Mostly heard by people who don't deal with a) the consequences of "rare" events, b) new devs/non-techies who don't understand the scale of how fast computers can make 1 error into milions c) people who don't grok Murphy's law

[Randall]

"So then if it does happen, it must be okay for the servers to crash and all the data to be corrupted. Okay then, next topic :)"

[Ryan Brown]

The nuclear option!
Employed well when no one group/person wants to Own a product/solution: "Ok so no own wants to own it? you want the Devs to own it? OK, we don't need it and we'll turn it off."
"NO NOT LIKE THAT! WAIT!"

[Paper Coding]

The harder your code is to read, the harder it is for people to replace you

[Rain Leander]

"The future is not binary." - Meredith Whittaker

As a nonbinary person, Meredith Whittaker's quote reminds me that technology should not only be inclusive of diverse gender identities, but that it has the potential to expand beyond the binary limitations of traditional societal structures.

[Shirobachi]

"Don't blame people from make mistake, or write regex each time you do that"
Simple just don't other feel bad, learn from mistake!

[Helene Voyer]

Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.
-Martin Fowler (co-author of Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code

I keep that in mind whenever I modify existing code or write new code.

[Abhishek Mishra]

Keep it simple stupid.

PS: Keeping things simple is hardest part :)

[Ralph Hightower]

My favorite quote is from Frederick Brooks in his book, The Mythical Man-month:

• The flawed nine pregnant women project management model, about adding more people to a project: "If it takes a woman Nine months to produce a baby, then nine pregnant women can produce a baby in one month.