Linus Torvalds Quotes

Just build things and find out if they work.

People think innovation is just having a good idea but a lot of it is just moving quickly and trying a lot of things.

Few ideas work on the first try. Iteration is key to innovation.

You can sometimes avoid costly mistakes. Paint a corner of the room a certain color to see how the light affects it. Or buy just one yard of an expensive fabric to see how you like it in your room.

It's a place where I could do something on a weekly basis and see if I like it.

I really liked figuring things out on my own. Early on in the development of a new version of Windows, I would explore it, I would try out various things, I would see what worked, I would see what didn't work.

We very much use a prototyping model, play with ideas, and then get stuff started that way, which is how the greatest projects get started.

I view myself as an experimentalist. I've tried everything in the book, and I have replicated results to one extent or another.

Essentially, 'Z2' ended up feeling the way that it should, but it was through a considerable amount of trial and error that it took to get there.

There is no way to find the best design except to try out as many designs as possible and discard the failures.

The real measure of success is the number of experiments that can be crowded into 24 hours.

Prototype, then polish. Get it working before you optimize it

To take up half on trust, and half to try, Name it not faith but bungling bigotry.

I don't mind trying it out and making sure something seems to work well.

The management question, therefore, is not whether to build a pilot system and throw it away. You will do that. Hence plan to throw one away; you will, anyhow.

Make mistakes faster.

Trying to apply formal methods to all software projects is just as bad as trying to apply code-and-fix development to all projects.

To toy with something is to manipulate it, to try it out within sets of contexts none of which is determinate.

When it comes to innovation, business has much to learn from design. The philosophy in design shops is, 'try it, prototype it, and improve it'.

Negative results are just what I want. They’re just as valuable to me as positive results. I can never find the thing that does the job best until I find the ones that don’t.

If you're not making mistakes, you're not trying.

Test everything, try everything, and then believe it, and if you find it for the good of many, give it to all.

You learn by trying and failing. Just a lot of hard work and mistakes.

That without experimentation, a willingness to ask questions and try new things, we shall surely become static, repetitive, moribund.

Experiment is folly when experience shows the way.