Perfection

After working on a fairly complicated problem for the past few weeks, I was reflecting on the process of writing software one day. It occurred to me that a good piece of software is not just working code - it is code that the writer spent a fair amount of time perfecting until there are no rough edges anywhere. It is what you get when you have nothing more that can be removed (I didnt come up with that, search online to see who did). Not one line more, nor one line less would do exactly the same thing. (Thats another reference. Checkout Byron)

And suddenly, I was enlightened. It isnt just software where this is true. It is true of everything I could think of so far - cooking, movie making, art, music, structural engineering... pretty much everything.

So.. my learning, which is the point of this entry is: Perfection is a prerequisite for greatness.