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Perlis's Epigrams are my favourite. http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/perlis-alan/quotes.html

"When we write programs that 'learn', it turns out that we do and they don't."

I still wonder what he means when he says: "Everything should be built top-down, except the first time. ". What is different the first time that warrants not to do it?



In my experience with my own projects, building top-down only works if you already know how the lower-level components will be structured. Else you'll inevitably end up overengineering the lot.


The first time you don't know what the top looks like.


Domain knowledge?




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