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Software 271

A common and costly mistake is to put off thinking about a class of
things you are going to need in the next release because of time pressure.
‘Time out, that’s for the next release’ and similar statements spell disaster
for the future of a project as when you come to the next release, you may
have to rewrite much of it from scratch. This is why good architects are
so valuable. They anticipate the future even when they are told to ignore
it and ship now!
Just as there are artistic geniuses, there are programming geniuses.
Hold onto them if you get one. They are rare. We don’t know if they
can be made or they are lucky accidents, but statistics shows that some
people are 1000 times more productive at writing code than the average.
If you can find lots of them and make them work together you will build
the next Google or Facebook. If you have a tight deadline, a super-
programmer may get you out of a hole, producing in a week what might
otherwise take a year. Remember your great programmers will most
prolific if you can get process and distraction out of their way. Just make
sure they have a clear idea of purpose.

Laws

A programmer interrupted eight times a day does no work.

A creative person interrupted eight times a day does no work.

Programming is a creative endeavor.

There are creative geniuses. Hold onto them.

Bugs save us from collapsing space-time when we are lazy and try
to use mechanical means rather than creative thought to write software.

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