Quotes About Precision

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. —ALBERT EINSTEIN

Be as precise as possible about your need for aid.

The researchers thought that recipients of precise offers are much more likely to believe that the person making that offer has invested time and effort preparing for the negotiation and therefore has very good reasons to support the precise offer they are making.

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. —Leonardo da Vinci

You spread yourself out too thin, my son. A man who can do everything can do nothing. We specialize in our country. I hire men who can do only one thing, and do that thing better than anybody else.

The average pencil is seven inches long, with just a half-inch eraser - in case you thought optimism was dead.

The average pencil is seven inches long, with just a half-inch eraser — in case you thought optimism was dead.

Where you find quality, you will find a craftsman, not a quality-control expert.

Abstraction is the elimination of the irrelevant and the amplification of the essential.

FUNCTIONS SHOULD DO ONE THING. THEY SHOULD DO IT WELL. THEY SHOULD DO IT ONLY.

Say what you mean. Mean what you say.

We want our code to be a quick skim, not an intense study.

We are confidently commanding, in precise detail, the behaviors of a machine that could otherwise do incalculable damage. And so, programming is an act of supreme arrogance.

God is in the details, said the architect Ludwig mies van der Rohe.

Cuteness in code often appears in the form of colloquialisms or slang. For example, don't use the name whack() to mean kill(). Don't tell little culture-dependent jokes like eatMyShorts() to mean abort(). Say what you mean. Mean what you say.

There is no such thing as quick and dirty. Anything dirty is slow. The only way to go fast, is to go well.

Am I suggesting 100% test coverage? No, I'm not suggesting it. I'm demanding it. Every single line of code that you write should be tested. Period.

if the bricks aren't well made, the architecture of the building doesn't matter much.

That's being attentive to every variable name. You should name a variable using the same care with which you name a first-born child.

You know you are working on clean code when each routine turns out to be pretty much what you expected.

Clean code is focused. Each function, each class, each module exposes a single-minded attitude that remains entirely undistracted, and unpolluted, by the surrounding details.

The fact is that making messes is always slower than staying clean, no matter which time scale you are using.

Premature Precision Both business and programmers are tempted to fall into the trap of premature precision. Business people want to know exactly what they are going to get before they authorize a project. Developers want to know exactly what they are supposed to deliver before they estimate the project. Both sides want a precision that simply cannot be achieved, and are often willing to waste a fortune trying to attain it.

It is not enough for code to work.