Marijn Haverbeke

Programming, it turns out, is hard. The fundamental rules are typically simple and clear. But programs built on top of these rules tend to become complex enough to introduce their own rules and complexity. You’re building your own maze, in a way, and you might just get lost in it.

Computers themselves can do only stupidly straightforward things. The reason they are so useful is that they do these things at an incredibly high speed.

A program is a building of thought. It is costless to build, it is weightless, and it grows easily under our typing hands. But without care, a program’s size and complexity will grow out of control, confusing even the person who created it.

There are many terrible mistakes to make in program design, so go ahead and make them so that you understand them better.

Size almost always involves complexity, and complexity confuses programmers. Confused programmers, in turn, introduce mistakes (bugs) into programs.

Flaws in computer programs are usually called bugs. It makes programmers feel good to imagine them as little things that just happen to crawl into our work. In reality, of course, we put them there ourselves.