Quotes About Precision

A long descriptive name is better than a short enigmatic name. A long descriptive name is better than a long descriptive comment.

The only way to go fast, is to go well.

Clean code always looks like it was written by someone who cares.

Remember that code is really the language in which we ultimately express the requirements. We may create languages that are closer to the requirements. We may create tools that help us parse and assemble those requirements into formal structures. But we will never eliminate necessary precision—so there will always be code.

Programmers must avoid leaving false clues that obscure the meaning of code.

The problem is, when things go verbal, you drop out the detail.

they all possessed that seriousness of the efficient workman which first learns to construct the parts properly before it ventures to fashion a great whole; they allowed themselves time for it, because they took more pleasure in making the little, secondary things well than in the effect of a dazzling whole. —FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

When you see several steps ahead, and plan your moves all the way to the end, you will no longer be tempted by emotion or by the desire to improvise. Your clarity will rid you of the anxiety and vagueness that are the primary reasons why so many fail to conclude their actions successfully. You see the ending and you tolerate no deviation

Master the Small Things

patience ... the principal requirement in the art of timing.

What are the facts? Again and again and again – what are the facts? Shun wishful thinking, ignore divine revelation, forget what "the stars foretell," avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors think, never mind the unguessable "verdict of history" – what are the facts, and to how many decimal places? You pilot always into an unknown future; facts are your single clue. Get the facts!

Origami artists have made birds 1/64th of an inch long, and life-size elephants three yards high.

Let the word stand on its own. If it is the right word, it will work without help. If it's the wrong word, adding other words to it will just make it seem desperate.

Leaving something unfinished was nearly as bad as messing up the details.

Just a little off the top!- A. Boleyn

There's one good thing about being in the bomb disposal unit: No superior officer is ever looking over your shoulder.

An expert and a precisionist makes his analysis first, he always said, then his decision.3

Other people can talk about how to expand the destiny of mankind. I just want to talk about how to fix a motorcycle. I think that what I have to say has more lasting value.

Although motorcycle riding is romantic, motorcycle maintenance is purely classic.

There is a classic esthetic which romantics often miss because of its subtlety. The classic style is straightforward, unadorned, unemotional, economical and carefully proportioned. Its purpose is not to inspire emotionally, but to bring order out of chaos and make the unknown known.

I'm about to sharpen up the engine a little.

Normally screws are so cheap and small and simple you think of them as unimportant. But now, as your Quality awareness becomes stronger, you realize that this one, individual, particular screw is neither cheap nor small nor unimportant. Right now this screw is worth exactly the selling price of the whole motorcycle, because the motorcycle is actually valueless until you get the screw out. With this reevaluation of the screw comes a willingness to expand your knowledge of it.

Quality isn't a substance. Neither is it a method. It's outside of both. If one builds a house using the plumb-line and spirit-level methods he does so because a straight vertical wall is less likely to collapse and thus has higher Quality than a crooked one. Quality isn't method. It's the goal toward which method is aimed.

The difference between a good mechanic and a bad one, like the difference between a good mathematician and a bad one, is precisely this ability to select the good facts from the bad ones on the basis of quality.