Related:

• The so-called "desktop metaphor" of today's workstations is instead an "airplane-seat" metaphor.
  Anyone who has shuffled a lap full of papers while seated between two portly passengers will recognize the difference -- one can see only a very few things at once....
• when fits of creativity run strong, more than one programmer or writer has been known to abandon the desktop for the more spacious floor.
  -- Frederick P. Brooks, Jr....
• Observe that for the programmer, as for the chef, the urgency of the patron may govern the scheduled completion of the task, but it cannot govern the actual completion.
  An omelette, promised in two minutes, may appear to be progressing nicely....
• Plan to throw one away. You will anyway. -- Frederick P. Brooks, Jr., "The Mythical Man Month
• computer hardware progress is so fast. No other technology since civilization began has seen six orders of magnitude in performance-price gain in 30 years.
  -- Frederick P. Brooks, Jr....
• The tar pit of software engineering will continue to be sticky for a long time to come.
  One can expect the human race to continue attempting systems just within or just beyond our reach...
• The programmer, like the poet, works only slightly removed from pure thought- stuff.
  He builds his castles in the air, from air, creating by exertion of the imagination....
• Jacques: First, you must get to know your lane. Feel the slickness, feel the slippery finish.
  Caresses it, experience it. Quite smooth, isn't it?...
• This, then, is the demythologizing of the man-month.
  The number of months of a project depends on its sequential constraints....