Adam's Maxims

  1. "Understandable" is better than "correct" which is better than "fast".
  2. You can never have too much error logging.
  3. In mathematics, computer programming, and vacuuming, the edges are always the hardest parts.
  4. Error messages are there for a reason: fix them!
  5. The time spent on a software project should be divided roughly as follows: 40% for testing, 45% for documentation, and 15% for coding. In practice, the time you will spend will be 95% for coding, 4.999% for testing, and 0.001% for documentation.
  6. Never drink orange juice right after brushing your teeth.
  7. Programming is hard; user interface design is very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very hard.
  8. Make testing easy: build it into the code.
  9. Not cleaning up temporary files is asking for touble. (Corollary: Troubleshooting tip: did you run out of disk space? Hmmm?)