Matt > Matt's Quotes

“Design patterns should not be applied indiscriminately. Often they achieve flexibility and variability by introducing additional levels of indirection, and that can complicate a design and/or cost you some performance. A design pattern should only be applied when the flexibility it affords is actually needed.”
― Erich Gamma, Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software

“Without a shared design language and practices, collaboration is difficult.”
― Alla Kholmatova, Design Systems

“Creating consistency is like making small promises throughout the interface (when you see a pink button it is always an action; the “Cancel” button always comes before “Submit”). When people can be confident of what will happen, they can rely on the product. Consistency helps to build trust.”
― Alla Kholmatova, Design Systems

“So, another way to know that a function is doing more than “one thing” is if you can extract another function from it with a name that is not merely a restatement of its implementation”
― Robert C. Martin, Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship

“We do not want to expose the details of our data. Rather we want to express our data in abstract terms. This is not merely accomplished by using interfaces and/or getters and setters. Serious thought needs to be put into the best way to represent the data that an object contains. The worst option is to blithely add getters and setters.”
― Robert C. Martin, Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship

“Code at the boundaries needs clear separation and tests that define expectations. We should avoid letting too much of our code know about the third-party particulars. It’s better to depend on something you control than on something you don’t control, lest it end up controlling you.”
― Robert C. Martin, Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship

“The moral of the story is simple: Test code is just as important as production code. It is not a second-class citizen. It requires thought, design, and care. It must be kept as clean as production code.”
― Robert C. Martin, Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship

“The brutal truth is that architecture is too important to be left exclusively to a few people. It’s fine to have an architect, but the key way to keep an architecture intact is to make sure that everyone on the team knows what it is and has a stake in it.”
― Michael C. Feathers, Working Effectively with Legacy Code

“It is difficult beyond description to pursue a complex policy in a contentious part of the world when the policy is subject to instant modification based on the boss’s perception of how inaccurate and often-already-outdated information is reported by writers who don’t have the Administration’s best interests at heart in the first place. It was like making and executing policy inside a pinball machine, not the West Wing of the White House.”
― John R. Bolton, The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir

“To summarize, a great business will show the following characteristics in its financial statements: Earnings show a smooth upward trend Consistent return on equity (ROE) greater than 20% Consistent return on total capital (ROTC) greater than 15% Long-term debt less than 4 times earnings”
― Matthew R. Kratter, Invest Like Warren Buffett: Powerful Strategies for Building Wealth

“To summarize, a great business will show the following characteristics in its financial statements: Earnings show a smooth upward trend Consistent return on equity (ROE) greater than 20% Consistent return on total capital (ROTC) greater than 15% Long-term debt less than 4 times earnings Pays a dividend and/or buys back stock”
― Matthew R. Kratter, Invest Like Warren Buffett: Powerful Strategies for Building Wealth