Some good stuff here, and some dreck dressed up as profundity, I think. Of course depending on one's position in the software foodchain, what's dreck and what'

Some good stuff here, and some dreck dressed up as profundity, I think. Of course depending on one's position in the software foodchain, what's dreck and what's wisdom might vary. Tom van Vleck's software quality / Black Death analogy makes all the sense in the world to me while I'm nose-down in the code. To my clients and my managers it's probably worse than gibberish. Conversely, "Deming's 14 points" strike me as meaningless word salad. And if I could mention one I love that's not on that list: "Premature optimization is the root of all evil." (Donald Knuth)