I am a design chauvinist. I believe that good design is
magical and not to be lightly tinkered with. The difference
between a great design and a lousy one is in the meshing of
the thousand details that either fit or don't, and the spirit
of the passionate intellect that has tied them together, or
tried. That's why programming-- or buying software-- on the
basis of "lists of features" is a doomed and misguided effort.
The features can be thrown together, as in a garbage can, or
carefully laid together and interwoven in elegant unification,
as in APL, or the Forth language, or the game of chess.
-- Ted Nelson
