Quotes from Eric S. Raymond

CSV (fields separated by commas, double quotes used to escape commas, no continuation lines) is rarely found under Unix.

Use # as an introducer for comments. It is good to have a way to embed annotations and comments in data files. It's best if they're actually part of the file structure, and so will be preserved by tools that know its format. For comments that are not preserved during parsing, # is the conventional start character.

Transparency is therefore more than an esthetic triumph; it is a victory that will be reflected in lower costs throughout the software's life cycle. 6.2.2

Top-down tends to be good practice when three preconditions are true: (a) you can specify in advance precisely what the program is to do, (b) the specification is unlikely to change significantly during implementation, and (c) you have a lot of freedom in choosing, at a low level, how the program is to get that job done.

There is a flip side to this. In the Unix world, libraries which are delivered as libraries should come with exerciser programs.

Another vital factor was the development of a leadership style and set of cooperative customs that could allow developers to attract co-developers and get maximum leverage out of the medium.

When the superior programmer refrains from coding, his force is felt for a thousand miles.

We're proving not only that we can do better software, but that joy is an asset.

If you have any trouble sounding condescending, find a Unix user to show you how it's done. Dilbert newsletter 3.0, 1994 —Scott Adams

It may well turn out that one of the most important effects of open source's success will be to teach us that play is the most economically efficient mode of creative work.

Indeed, it seems the prescription for highest software productivity is almost a Zen paradox; if you want the most efficient production, you must give up trying to make programmers produce. Handle their subsistence, give them their heads, and forget about deadlines. To a conventional manager this sounds crazily indulgent and doomed — but it is exactly the recipe with which the open-source culture is now clobbering its competition.

It's not all that important that you be able to originate brilliant ideas... The more important talent is to be able to recognize good ideas from other people.

Users are wonderful things to have, and not just because they demonstrate that you're serving a need, that you've done something right. Properly cultivated, they can become co-developers.

When you lose interest in a program, your last duty to it is to hand it off to a competent successor.

Creative brains are a valuable, limited resource. They shouldn't be wasted on re-inventing the wheel when there are so many fascinating new problems waiting out there.

Part of the answer certainly lies in the fact that using software does not decrease its value. Indeed, widespread use of open-source software tends to increase its value, as users fold in their own fixes and features (code patches). In this inverse commons, the grass grows taller when it's grazed upon.

The workstation-class machines built by Sun and others opened up new worlds for hackers.

Does Facebook behave like a tool in my hand, or a firehose designed to spew at me in accordance with other peoples' agendas? Concretely: can I write my own client to present a filtered view of the Facebook stream, or have other people do that for me?

Programmer time is expensive; conserve it in preference to machine time

Money is just a way to keep score. The best people in any field are motivated by passion. That becomes more true the higher the skill level gets.

When I hear the words "social responsibility," I want to reach for my gun.

People are happiest when they're the most productive. People enjoy tasks, especially creative tasks, when the tasks are in the optimal-challenge zone: not too hard and not too easy. To some extent, that has always been true. But it becomes even more true as work becomes more about brains and creativity.

Berkeley hackers liked to see themselves as rebels against soulless corporate empires.

The beginnings of the hacker culture as we know it today can be conveniently dated to 1961, the year MIT acquired the first PDP-1.