Jeff Atwood Quotes

#1. But everyone should try writing a little code, because it somehow sharpens the mind, right?

Jeff Atwood

#2. We have to stop optimizing for programmers and start optimizing for users.

Jeff Atwood

#3. Being an expert isn't telling other people what you know. It's understanding what questions to ask, and flexibly applying your knowledge to the specific situation at hand. Being an expert means providing sensible, highly contextual direction.

Jeff Atwood

#4. 5. Pay now and consume later

Jeff Atwood

#5. Success is rarely determined by the quality of your ideas. But it is frequently determined by the quality of your execution.

Jeff Atwood

#6. That's not to say that all software project management books are crap. Just most of them. One of the few that I've found compelling enough to finish is Johanna Rothman's "Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management." She co-wrote it with Esther Derby.

Jeff Atwood

#7. Teaching peers is one of the best ways to develop mastery.

Jeff Atwood

#8. I always suspected that programmers became programmers because they got to play God with the little universe boxes on their desks.

Jeff Atwood

#9. Writing code? That's the easy part. Getting your application in the hands of users, and creating applications that people actually want to use - now that's the hard stuff.

Jeff Atwood

#10. In software, we rarely have meaningful requirements. Even if we do, the only measure of success that matters is whether our solution solves the customer's shifting idea of what their problem is.

Jeff Atwood

#11. even Mozart, who was a musical prodigy at age four, took 13 more years before he began to produce world-class music. The

Jeff Atwood

#12. If you don't have people that care about usability on your project, your project is doomed.

Jeff Atwood

#13. I'm constantly running across comments from developers who don't seem to understand that the code already tells us how it works; we need the comments to tell us why it works. Code comments

Jeff Atwood

#14. 7. Beware of comparison shopping

Jeff Atwood

#15. 6. Think about what you're not thinking about

Jeff Atwood

#16. When given a choice, choose the thing that scares you a little. If it's 100% safe, it is holding you back.

Jeff Atwood

#17. You can achieve a shallow local maximum with A/B testing - but you'll never win hearts and minds.

Jeff Atwood

#18. Oftentimes, the whole reason we became programmers in the first place is because we wanted to move beyond being a mere player and change the game, control it, modify its parameters, maybe even create our own games.

Jeff Atwood

#19. If you do not trust your people, you will not get their whole-hearted effort and you will not capitalize on the enormous creative potential of cohesive and motivated teamwork. It

Jeff Atwood

#20. Obviously we want to succeed. But on some level, success is irrelevant, because the process is inherently satisfying. Waking

Jeff Atwood