The wisdom o' mcguire

My personal war cry is "Details matter." It's something that many people in software development don't appreciate as much as they ought to; a detail is often the difference between something that is right and something that looks like it should be right but manifestly isn't. And, there's a lot of details in software.

But a corollary of my version of "Spoon!" is that skills matter, too. They're how you know the important details from the unimportant ones, and how to manage the important ones. The only way to get that kind of skills is by experience. To use your own example, have you seen the difference in efficiency and results between someone who's just been shown how to lay bricks and someone with 45 years of experience? Or even better, a team with someone with 45 years experience to tell the others when they're not doing it right?

Judging by the brickwork on my house, the answer to your question is "More than we have now."

— mcguire on HN