Rushing to optimize before the bottlenecks are known may be the only error to have ruined more designs than feature creep. From… — Eric S. Raymond Copy Share Image
Ugly programs are like ugly suspension bridges: they're much more liable to collapse than pretty ones, because the way humans (especially engineer-humans)… — Eric S. Raymond Copy Share Image
Treating your users as co-developers is your least-hassle route to rapid code improvement and effective debugging. — Eric S. Raymond Copy Share Image
Smart data structures and dumb code works a lot better than the other way around. — Eric S. Raymond Copy Share Image
The Wesnoth devs are good but not exceptionally so, and we're weighed down by a crappy implementation language (C++). Nevertheless our productivity, in terms… — Eric S. Raymond Copy Share Image
“We’re proving not only that we can do better software, but that joy is an asset.” — Eric S. Raymond Copy Share Image
The workstation-class machines built by Sun and others opened up new worlds for hackers. — Eric S. Raymond Copy Share Image
“If (as is generally accepted) over 75% of a typical software project’s life-cycle costs will be in maintenance and debugging and extensions, then the… — Eric S. Raymond Copy Share Image
The combination of threads, remote-procedure-call interfaces, and heavyweight object-oriented design is especially dangerous... if you are ever invited onto a project that is supposed… — Eric S. Raymond Copy Share Image
Lisp is worth learning for the profound enlightenment experience you will have when you finally get it; that experience will make you a better… — Eric S. Raymond Copy Share Image
You cannot motivate the best people with money. Money is just a way to keep score. The best people in any field are motivated… — Eric S. Raymond Copy Share Image
“The Linux world behaves in many respects like a free market or an ecology, a collection of selfish agents attempting to maximize utility which… — Eric S. Raymond Copy Share Image
“The reason this is a serious issue is that both the pool of users and the pool of talent available to be recruited into… — Eric S. Raymond Copy Share Image
A security system is only as secure as its secret. Beware of pseudo-secrets. — Eric S. Raymond Copy Share Image
Today I am one of the senior technical cadre that makes the Internet work, and a core Linux and open-source developer. — Eric S. Raymond Copy Share Image
