I recently stumbled across: Snippets on Software. It’s a collection of mini-notes on software with links to more if you are interested in more detail. Some snippets are wonderful, some clearly aren’t exclusive to software and some I would argue are just plain wrong. Nonetheless, it’s a great list.
It’s too long to read from end-to-end in one sitting but it’s well worth skimming. Below a few snippets that I enjoyed to whet your appetite:
"there is only one consensus protocol, and that's Paxos" - all other approaches are just broken versions of Paxos. – Mike Burrows
Conway’s Law: Any organization that designs a system (defined broadly) will produce a design whose structure is a copy of the organization's communication structure.
"Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking." -- Albert Einstein
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects. -Robert A. Heinlein
"You can try to control people, or you can try to have a system that represents reality. I find that knowing what's really happening is more important than trying to control people." -- Larry Page
Everyone knows that debugging is twice as hard as writing a program in the first place. So if you're as clever as you can be when you write it, how will you ever debug it? --Brian Kernighan
--jrh
James Hamilton, Amazon Web Services
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