learn to program by looking at good programs — not just at what they do, but at the source code. - Paul Graham

A painting is never finished. You just stop working on it.” This idea will be familiar to anyone who has worked on software.

When we do things that work, we rarely understand exactly why. We do them unconsciously, or because of tradition, or because we stumbled onto them. A lot of the value of essay writing is in figuring out why things that work do work.

beautiful things don’t always make the best subjects for papers. Number one, research must be original — and as anyone who has written a PhD dissertation knows, the way to be sure you’re exploring virgin territory is to stake out a piece of ground that no one wants. Number two, research must be substantial — and awkward systems yield meatier papers, because you can write about the obstacles you have to overcome in order to get things done. Nothing yields meaty problems like starting with the wrong assumptions.