Kent Beck Quotes

There has to be a willingness to constantly accept critical feedback and rapidly iterate to make things better.

A typical software project can present more opportunities to learn from mistakes than some people get in a lifetime.

If you're as clever as you can be when you write it, how will you ever debug it?

I am an optimist by nature and believe strongly that technology can be brought to bear to create alternatives, even in crisis situations.

It's core to my beliefs now: Sometimes in being given a challenge, you're actually being given a real opportunity, and a lot of that is how you handle it. Do you feel sorry for yourself or do you think, All right! I'll see what I can make out of this? I've had that over and over. If I hang out in the disappointment, I'll just be disappointed all the time.

I don't look at obstacles as obstacles. I look at them as things that were put there for a reason. You can approach these things negatively or positively. I think those that approach it with a negative mindset only get a negative outcome.

In programming, as in everything else, to be in error is to be reborn.

The minute you feel you have given a faultless performance is the time to get out.

A good boss asks what part she could have played in the problem. And then she asks herself what she can do better next time.

I'm never at my worst because even at my lowest, its a learning experience. It's something that I'll bounce ideas off. I can take negatives and flip them to positives at all times.

Cynics criticize and winners analyze.

The future is better than the past. Despite the crepe hangers, romanticists, and anti-intellectuals, the world steadily grows better because the human mind, applying itself to environment, makes it better. With hands ... with tools ... with horse sense and science and engineering.

It's not always the case that things will fall into your lap or that life will be great, but it's all about perspective and having a positive outlook. If something goes wrong you say: "That happened for a reason, what can I learn from that and how can I grow?"

Hope regards problems, small or large, as opportunities.

If in physics there's something you don't understand, you can always hide behind the uncharted depths of nature. You can always blame God. You didn't make it so complex yourself. But if your program doesn't work, there is no one to hide behind. You cannot hide behind an obstinate nature. If it doesn't work, you've messed up.

You miss a lot of opportunities by making mistakes, but that's part of it: knowing that you're not shut out forever, and that there's a goal you still can reach.

I've never considered failure.

Optimism is a perfectly legitimate response to failure.

I expect us to win. I expect us to get better every day.

People tell me, "You're such an optimist". Am I an optimist? An optimist says the glass is half full. A pessimist says the glass is half empty. A survivalist is practical. He says, "Call it what you want, but just fill the glass." I believe in filling the glass.

Focus on the possibilities for success, not on the potential for failure

Life gives no one immunity against adversity, but life gives to everyone the power of positive thought which is sufficient to master all circumstances of adversity and convert them into benefits.

Doubters do not achieve; skeptics do not contribute; cynics do not create.

Positive thinking is how you think about a problem. Enthusiasm is how you feel about a problem. The two together determine what you do about a problem.

I learned that everyone makes mistakes and has weaknesses and that one of the most important things that differentiates people is their approach to handling them. I learned that there is an incredible beauty to mistakes, because embedded in each mistake is a puzzle, and a gem that I could get if I solved it, i.e. a principle that I could use to reduce my mistakes in the future.