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Prototype, then polish. Get it working before you optimize it

Eric S. Raymond

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Eric S. Raymond
Age: 67
Born: 1957
Born: December 4
Computer Scientist
Engineer
Journalist
Lawyer
Programmer
Software Developer
Writer
Boston
Massachusetts
Eric Raymond
Eric Steven Raymond
ESR
Optimize
Prototype
Polish
Working

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Computer science education cannot make anybody an expert programmer any more than studying brushes and pigment can make somebody an expert painter.
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And for any agents or proxy of the regime interested in asking me questions face to face, I've got some bullets slathered in pork fat to make you feel extra special welcome.
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Release early. Release often. And listen to your customers.
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Programmer time is expensive conserve it in preference to machine time
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Linux evolved in a completely different way. From nearly the beginning, it was rather casually hacked on by huge numbers of volunteers coordinating only through the Internet.
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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 of goals achieved per hour of work, is quite high.
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Berkeley hackers liked to see themselves as rebels against soulless corporate empires.
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It is widely grokked that cats have the hacker nature
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On first blush this looks to be about money, but it is about power. Is power going to go to the information monopolies, or will it go to developers and users?.
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The easiest programs to use are those which demand the least new learning from the user
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Ugly programs are like ugly suspension bridges: they're much more liable to collapse than pretty ones, because the way humans (especially engineer-humans) perceive beauty is intimately related to our ability to process and understand complexity. A language that makes it hard to write elegant code makes it hard to write good code.
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The workstation-class machines built by Sun and others opened up new worlds for hackers.
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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 to feature all three, fleeing in terror might well be an appropriate reaction.
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Being able to break security doesn't make you a hacker anymore than being able to hotwire cars makes you an automotive engineer.
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You cannot motivate the best people with money. Money is just a way to keep score. The best people in any field are motivated by passion.
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When you lose interest in a program, your last duty to it is to hand it off to a competent successor.
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Software is largely a service industry operating under the persistent but unfounded delusion that it is a manufacturing industry
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Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow (e.g., given a large enough beta-tester and co-developer base, almost every problem will be characterized quickly and the fix obvious to someone).
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In the U.S., blacks are 12% of the population but commit 50% of violent crimes can anyone honestly think this is unconnected to the fact that they average 15 points of IQ lower than the general population? That stupid people are more violent is a fact independent of skin color.
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The next best thing to having good ideas is recognizing good ideas from your users. Sometimes the latter is better.
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