Jeff Atwood > Quotes

“Success is rarely determined by the quality of your ideas. But it is frequently determined by the quality of your execution.”
― Jeff Atwood, Effective Programming: More Than Writing Code

“When given a choice, choose the thing that scares you a little. If it's 100% safe, it is holding you back.”
― Jeff Atwood

“If money doesn’t make you happy, then you probably aren’t spending it right.”
― Jeff Atwood, Effective Programming: More Than Writing Code

“I always suspected that programmers became programmers because they got to play God with the little universe boxes on their desks.”
― Jeff Atwood

“Don't be the guy telling everyone what to do. Be the guy asking all the questions.”
― Jeff Atwood, How to Stop Sucking and Be Awesome Instead

“We should always be in pursuit of simplicity, in whatever form it takes.”
― Jeff Atwood, How to Stop Sucking and Be Awesome Instead

“Build what you need as you need it, aggressively refactoring as you go along; don't spend a lot of time planning for grandiose, unknown future scenarios. Good software can evolve into what it will ultimately become.”
― Jeff Atwood

“If you give a good idea to a mediocre group, they’ll screw it up. If you give a mediocre idea to a good group, they’ll fix it. Or they’ll throw it away and come up with something else.”
― Jeff Atwood, Effective Programming: More Than Writing Code

“As a software developer, you are your own worst enemy. The sooner you realize that, the better off you’ll be.”
― Jeff Atwood, Effective Programming: More Than Writing Code

“worst team member is the best predictor of how any team performs. It doesn’t seem to matter how great the best member is,”
― Jeff Atwood, Effective Programming: More Than Writing Code

“So much of leadership is learning to give a damn about other people, something that we programmers are notoriously bad at.”
― Jeff Atwood, Effective Programming: More Than Writing Code

“The toughest thing in life is not learning a bunch of potentially hypothetically useful stuff, but figuring out what the heck it is you want to do.”
― Jeff Atwood, Effective Programming: More Than Writing Code

“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, How to Stop Sucking and Be Awesome Instead

“Success is rarely determined by the quality of your ideas. But it is frequently determined by the quality of your execution.”
― Jeff Atwood, Effective Programming: More Than Writing Code

“the ultimate unit test is whether or not users want to use your application. All the other tests you write are totally irrelevant until you can get that one to pass.”
― Jeff Atwood, Effective Programming: More Than Writing Code

“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, Effective Programming: More Than Writing Code

“3. Buy many small pleasures instead of few big ones”
― Jeff Atwood, Effective Programming: More Than Writing Code

“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, Effective Programming: More Than Writing Code

“In my experience, the more isolated the developers, the worse the resulting end product. It”
― Jeff Atwood, How to Stop Sucking and Be Awesome Instead

“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, How to Stop Sucking and Be Awesome Instead

“But everyone should try writing a little code, because it somehow sharpens the mind, right?”
― Jeff Atwood, Effective Programming: More Than Writing Code

“we programmers spend our lives writing code so that our fellow human beings no longer need to write code”
― Jeff Atwood, Effective Programming: More Than Writing Code

“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, How to Stop Sucking and Be Awesome Instead

“2. Help others instead of yourself”
― Jeff Atwood, Effective Programming: More Than Writing Code

“The proper monitoring attitude is not to be distrustful, but instead, to show interest in their work.”
― Jeff Atwood, How to Stop Sucking and Be Awesome Instead

“6. Think about what you're not thinking about”
― Jeff Atwood, Effective Programming: More Than Writing Code

“As we know, There are known knowns. There are things we know we know. We also know There are known unknowns. That is to say We know there are some things We do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, The ones we don’t know We don’t know.”
― Jeff Atwood, Effective Programming: More Than Writing Code

“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, How to Stop Sucking and Be Awesome Instead

“4. Buy less insurance”
― Jeff Atwood, Effective Programming: More Than Writing Code

“Despite popular assertions to the contrary, science tells us that money can buy happiness. To a point.”
― Jeff Atwood, Effective Programming: More Than Writing Code