Andy Hunt > Quotes

“Only dead fish go with the flow.”
― Andy Hunt, Pragmatic Thinking and Learning: Refactor Your Wetware

“Always consider the context.”
― Andy Hunt, Pragmatic Thinking and Learning: Refactor Your Wetware

“Learning isn’t done to you; it’s something you do.”
― Andy Hunt, Pragmatic Thinking and Learning: Refactor Your Wetware

“I’ve heard from teams who have created email-free afternoons or entire days: no email, no phone calls, no interruptions. The developers involved said these were the most productive, happiest times of the week.”
― Andy Hunt, Pragmatic Thinking and Learning: Refactor Your Wetware

“As a counterexample, consider the case of the developer who claims ten years of experience, but in reality it was one year of experience repeated nine times. That doesn’t count as experience.”
― Andy Hunt, Pragmatic Thinking and Learning: Refactor Your Wetware

“That’s not what it’s all about. In fact, it seems we tend to misun-
derstand the very meaning of the word education.
Education comes from the Latin word educare, which literally
means “led out,” in the sense of being drawn forth. I find that little
tidbit really interesting, because we don’t generally think of educa-
tion in that sense—of drawing forth something from the learner.
Instead, it’s far more common to see education treated as some-
thing that’s done to the learner—as something that’s poured in,
not drawn out. This model is especially popular in corporate train-
ing, with a technique that’s known as sheep dip training.”
― Andy Hunt, Pragmatic Thinking and Learning: Refactor Your Wetware

“However, for programmers, combining rich, flexible human thought with the rigid constraints of a digital computer exposes the power and the deepest
flaws of both.”
― Andy Hunt, Pragmatic Thinking and Learning: Refactor Your Wetware

“When naming things, you’re constantly looking for ways of clarifying what you mean, and that act of clarification will lead you to a better understanding of your code as you write it.”
― Andy Hunt, The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master

“One broken window, left unrepaired for any substantial length of time, instills in the inhabitants of the building a sense of abandonment—a sense that the powers that be don’t care about the building. So another window gets broken. People start littering. Graffiti appears. Serious structural damage begins. In a relatively short span of time, the building becomes damaged beyond the owner’s desire to fix it, and the sense of abandonment becomes reality.”
― Andy Hunt, The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master

“Managing a knowledge portfolio is very similar to managing a financial portfolio.”
― Andy Hunt, The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master

“We believe that the major benefits of testing happen when you think about and write the tests, not when you run them.”
― Andy Hunt, The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master

“Coupled code is hard to change: alterations in one place can have secondary effects elsewhere in the code, and often in hard-to-find places that only come to light a month later in production.”
― Andy Hunt, Pragmatic Thinking and Learning: Refactor Your Wetware

“There are several good books that contain sections on communications within teams”
― Andy Hunt, The Pragmatic Programmer: Your Journey to Mastery, 20th Anniversary Edition

“Easy!,” you think. “Gently lower the collective pitch lever and you’ll descend gracefully to the ground, a hero.” However, when you try it, you discover that life isn’t that simple. The helicopter’s nose drops, and you start to spiral down to the left. Suddenly you discover that you’re flying a system where every control input has secondary effects. Lower the left-hand lever and you need to add compensating backward movement to the right-hand stick and push the right pedal. But then each of these changes affects all of the other controls again. Suddenly you’re juggling an unbelievably complex system, where every change impacts all the other inputs. Your workload is phenomenal: your hands and feet are constantly moving, trying to balance all the interacting forces.
Helicopter controls are decidedly not orthogonal.”
― Andy Hunt, The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master

“With a tracer bullet approach, you can implement very small bits of functionality very quickly, and get immediate feedback on how well your team communicates and delivers.”
― Andy Hunt, The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master

“Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations we can perform without thinking.”
― Andy Hunt, The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master

“Dentro de la estructura general de un proyecto, siempre hay espacio para la individualidad y la artesanía.”
― Andy Hunt, El programador pragmático. Edición especial: Viaje a la maestría

“Gestionar una cartera de conocimientos es muy similar a gestionar una cartera de valores: 1.Los inversores serios invierten con regularidad, como costumbre. 2.La diversificación es la clave del éxito a largo plazo. 3.Los inversores inteligentes mantienen un equilibrio en sus carteras entre inversiones conservadoras e inversiones de alto riesgo con recompensas elevadas. 4.Los inversores intentan comprar por precios bajos y vender por precios altos para obtener la máxima ganancia. 5.Las carteras deberían revisarse y volver a equilibrarse de forma periódica.”
― Andy Hunt, El programador pragmático. Edición especial: Viaje a la maestría