“Am I an aspiring actor? Am I a programmer? I’m a science fiction screenwriter who does way too much research. What’s the best way to find out what changes are really going to happen? Simple. Bet your ability to eat, for several years running, on which technologies you learn. After a while you get a pretty good intuition for that kind of thing. And likewise - the best way to write a screenplay? Learn to act!

“..programming is looking more and more like acting or screenwriting every day. Passion is necessary. The entry costs are approaching zero and the value of education is only partial. ..”you’re only as good as your latest hit”.. Every programmer should balance programming for money with programming for programming.

“Your employer is more important than the community.. Open source developers are no more virtuous than corporate developers. While you may program for fun and the satisfaction of a job well done, the choice of project you work on is inherently a selfish one. Always. ..a company has a reality check that can’t be ignored because sooner or later they’re going to have to go out there and prove themselves in the marketplace.

“The community is more important than your employer.

“Outsiders are not respected by the kernel community. This means we miss a lot.

“Digg.com is really lucky in that 98% of the time the database is accessed, it is being read.. Most people come to Digg’s front page, read it and leave, which is kind of nice..

“..easy solutions to important problems that LOOK really hard are the best.

“Paul Böhm’s idea of ripping off YCombinator has really paid off as a great marketing strategy to generate buzz quickly.

“HitForge is an entrepreneur cooperative composed of independent small teams, where people can apply with their ideas, join the team, and see their idea go from idea to product in a few weeks, largely with help from an offshore engineering team. If it works, then the product is turned into a company. If it doesn’t work, the product is killed, and the team moves onto something new. HitForge is out of a few thousand dollars. The team whose product got killed still gets to share in the hits that come out of the cooperative.

“..cooperation between persons or groups with very different Buxton Indices leads to mutual (moral) reproaches as long as the partners are unaware of the difference: the partner with the small Buxton Index is accused of short-sightedness and opportunism, the one with the large Buxton Index is accused of hobbyism and a lacking sense of responsibility.