> We pragmatists must be content to offer suggestions about how to patch things up, how to adjust things to each other, how to rearrange them into slightly more

> We pragmatists must be content to offer suggestions about how to patch things up, how to adjust things to each other, how to rearrange them into slightly more useful patterns. That is what I hope to have done in these lectures. I see myself as having shifted a few pieces around on the philosophical chessboard, rather than having answered any deep questions or produced any elevating thoughts. I feel like this attitude is very important in software, especially on legacy codebases. Everything is broken, nothing is "as it should be". But you can't really wait for everything to be perfect. You have to work with what you already have, maybe cleaning up a bit here and there. Pragmatism is very important to not fall into despair, inaction or burn-out. This may also hint at something deeper. Is there only one answer to deep questions? Is there one perfect way to handle strings? Maybe there is, maybe there isn't. But what's certain is that we could do better than what we're currently doing, whatever is our position. And once we're doing our best within the constraints, we can choose which tradeoffs to pick. But at this point, they will be tradeoffs, not fundamentally better ways to do things.