Quotes About Efficiency

One of my most productive days was throwing away 1000 lines of code

When it's hard to work on. I do it much quicker than most people do. I'll throw away code as soon I want to add something to it and I get the feeling that what I have to do to add it is too hard. I'll throw it away and start over and come up with a different partitioning that makes it easy to do whatever I wanted to do. I'm really quick on the trigger for throwing stuff out.

These moments move fast, if they are going to move at all, and with no superfluous nonsense. If they don't move, they die.

Absolute monarchy may indeed be the most efficient system the world has ever known, but we had better wait for the absolute control of the Perfect One, in the meantime resisting any pretenders to the throne.

Bad writing slows things down; good writing speeds them up.

This style of talk is generally heard among middle managers. It seldom comes from the CEO, who, having risen to the top, is less interested in impressing people than in clear communications — and getting things done.

Why waste energy with wasted movements?] Very commonly, tightening and furrowing the brow while concentrating... Is the brain a muscle that works better by tensing the skull?

XP always keeps the system in deployable condition. Problems are not allowed to accumulate.

The difference between what I think is valuable and what is really valuable creates waste.

Do The Simplest Thing That Could Possibly Work

Saying that programmers should just accomplish twice as much doesn't work. They can gain skills and effectiveness, but they cannot get more done on demand. More time at the desk does not equal increased productivity for creative work.

Rather than apply minutes of suspect reasoning, we can just ask the computer by making the change and running the tests.

You know what a cubicle basically says? It basically says, like, "You know what? We don't think you're smart enough for an office, but we don't want you to look at anybody."

Let me tell you, if we ignore human capital, if we lose the spirit of American ingenuity, the spirit that is the hallmark of the American worker, that would be bad. The American worker is the most productive worker in the world.

Working hard and working smart sometimes can be two different things.

We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil.

It has been left to our generation to discover that you can move heaven and earth to save five minutes and then not have the faintest idea what to do with them when you have saved them.

De fato, o ensino eficiente envolve explicar aos nossos filhos aquilo que eles já observam em nossa vida. Nunca devemos separar a instrução bíblica do exemplo pessoal.

Perfection of planned layout is achieved only by institutions on the point of collapse.

Eight days later he sent to Congress the most sweeping bill for civil rights up to that time, and urged it 'not merely for reasons of economic efficiency, world diplomacy and domestic tranquility—but above all because it is right.

There are two ways of constructing a software design: one way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies.

Fuel-efficient my big engine is not. I drove 38 miles and burned through more than a quarter-tank of expensive premium gas. Every time I accelerated I could sense a Saudi Arabian somewhere was smiling.

We recycle, don't we, Alex? And we replaced all of our lightbulbs. You know, with the ones that don't work very well? And one of my cars is a Prius. It's not like I don't care.

The best storytellers eliminate photographs before they even begin shooting. They pre-edit. They determine what isn't worth their effort to free up their time for the things that may prove to be remarkable.