The Old Blog Archive, 2005-2009

Snippets of Thoughts

  • Common sense and good reasoning are both rare.
  • Quality is built-in. It’s never something you can hire a consultant or designer to have.
  • Worse, face-lifts hide future implosions.
  • In the end, the work emanates from one’s belief or philosophy of building things. To ask “why a system behaves like that” or “why a system sucks like that” (ie. to trace the expression of a system’s working), we must go back to how the system is designed, thought and built.
  • Sadly, asking such “why” can offend.
  • Many system designers (many of them an incidental designer–they didn’t know they were laying the foundation) get angry if you ask them a commonsensical why.
  • If a person tells you “I’ve lately read this and this, and I fully agree with the methodology X, and we should do it”, be wary. A person who is easily converted is easy to switch again.
  • On the other hand, there’s no talking with someone who is entrenched with a given belief, especially if the reality is in conflict with it.
  • To say that a system is an expression of its founding thought seems to be a kind of idealism (ie. it’s the idea that counts). Of course a system is always designed within its constraints (ie. “the material basis”), but within the given boundary, it’s really the thought that counts.
  • Be very vigilant of the initial thought you put into the design of a system.

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