“Shipping first time code is like going into debt. A little debt speeds development so long as it is paid back promptly with a rewrite. The danger occurs when the debt is not repaid. Every minute spent on not-quite-right code counts as interest on that debt. Entire engineering organizations can be brought to a standstill under the debt load of an unconsolidated implementation, object-oriented or otherwise.” FirstsLittlesLongInterestMinutesDangerObjectsDevelopmentFirst TimeOrganizationPaidDebtSpeedCodeEngineeringLoadImplementationShippingStandstill Author:Ward Cunningham
“There will be no more danger, pollution or destruction, none of these things that we suffer from so much today. Everything will be heavenly, beautiful and natural, the way it was when God first created the earth.” WayFirstsTodayEarthBeautifulSufferingNaturalDangerDestructionHeavenlyPollutionGod First Author:David Berg
“At the approach of danger two voices speak with equal force in the heart of man: one very reasonably tells the man to consider the nature of the danger and the means of avoiding it and the other, even more reasonable, says that it is too painful and harassing to think of the danger... better to turn aside from the painful subject till it has come, and to think of what is pleasant. In solitude a man generally yields to the first voice; in society to the second.” ThinkingMenFirstsHeartMeanTwoTurnsSpeakForceVoiceSubjectsDangerHe ManSolitudeEqualApproachPainfulPleasantReasonableYieldAvoiding Author:Leo Tolstoy
“With the unknown, one is confronted with danger, discomfort, and care; the first instinct is to abolish these painful states. First principle: any explanation is better than none. . . . The causal instinct is thus conditional upon, and excited by, the feeling of fear. The "why?" shall, if at all possible, not give the cause for its own sake so much as for a particular kind of cause -- a cause that is comforting, liberating, and relieving.” IfsGivingFirstsKindStatesFeelingsCareCausesPrinciplesDangerParticularInstinctSakePainfulExcitedExplanationComfortingLiberatingDiscomfortAbolishConditional Book:The Portable Nietzsche Source: The Portable Nietzsche
“One of the most jolting days of adulthood comes the first time you run out of toilet paper. Toilet paper, up until this point, always just existed. And now it's a finite resource, constantly in danger of extinction, that must be carefully tracked and monitored, like pandas?” FirstsRunningDangerPaperResourcesFirst TimeAdulthoodFiniteExtinctionToiletsToilet PaperPandas Author:Kelly Williams Brown
“Alarmed successively by every fashionable medical terror of the day, she dosed her children with every specific which was publicly advertised or privately recommended...The consequence was, that the dangers, which had at first been imaginary, became real: these little victims of domestic medicine never had a day's health: they looked, and were, more dead than alive.” FirstsChildrenLittlesRealAliveDangerConsequenceVictimMedicineTerrorMedicalImaginaryFashionable Author:Maria Edgeworth