A common and costly mistake is to put off thinking about a class of

Software 271 A common and costly mistake is to put off thinking about a class of things you are going to need in the next release because of time pressure. ‘Time out, that’s for the next release’ and similar statements spell disaster for the future of a project as when you come to the next release, you may have to rewrite much of it from scratch. This is why good architects are so valuable. They anticipate the future even when they are told to ignore it and ship now! Just as there are artistic geniuses, there are programming geniuses. Hold onto them if you get one. They are rare. We don’t know if they can be made or they are lucky accidents, but statistics shows that some people are 1000 times more productive at writing code than the average. If you can find lots of them and make them work together you will build the next Google or Facebook. If you have a tight deadline, a super- programmer may get you out of a hole, producing in a week what might otherwise take a year. Remember your great programmers will most prolific if you can get process and distraction out of their way. Just make sure they have a clear idea of purpose. Laws A programmer interrupted eight times a day does no work. A creative person interrupted eight times a day does no work. Programming is a creative endeavor. There are creative geniuses. Hold onto them. Bugs save us from collapsing space-time when we are lazy and try to use mechanical means rather than creative thought to write software. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015961