“It is more important that milestones be sharp-edged and unambiguous than that they be easily verifiable by the boss. Rarely will a man lie about milestone progress, if the milestone is so sharp that he can't deceive himself. But if the milestone is fuzzy, the boss often understands a different report from that which the man gives. To supplement Sophocles, no one enjoys bearing bad news, either, so it gets softened without any real intent to deceive.”
― The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering
― The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering
“There are no interruptions, really—there are simply mismanaged occurrences.”
― Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity
― Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity
“I have to wonder if it isn’t more accurate to say that life is a series of trap doors, and you fall through them, one by one, tumbling down and down and down, one hole to the next.”
― World of Trouble
― World of Trouble
“Functional tests should help you build an application with the right functionality, and guarantee you never accidentally break it. Unit tests should help you to write code that’s clean and bug free.”
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“Most of us have, in the past seventy-two hours, received more change-producing, project-creating, and priority-shifting inputs than our parents did in a month, maybe even in a year.”
― Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity
― Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity
Matt Bachmann’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Matt Bachmann’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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