A Plea for Lean Software An Essay by Niklaus Wirth cr.yp.to Software's girth has surpassed its functionality, largely because hardware advances make this possible. The way to streamline software lies in disciplined methodologies and a return to the essentials. Measured by the number of its featuresEssential vs. nice to haveDependence is more profitable than educationThe most rewarding iterationsNever enough time A grossly obese set of requirementsFeatures and complexity softwareperformancefunction
Selling new ideas I must come to the topic of “selling” new ideas. You must master three things to do this: Giving formal presentations, Producing written reports, and Mastering the art of informal presentations as they happen to occur. All three are essential—you must learn to sell your ideas, not by propaganda, but by force of clear presentation. I am sorry to have to point this out; many scientists and others think good ideas will win out automatically and need not be carefully presented. They are wrong; many a good idea has had to be rediscovered because it was not well presented the first time, years before! Richard Hamming, You and Your Research Scientific writing