Attitude Matters Too

"When you see the right thing, do it — this may look like more work in the short term, but it’s the path
of least effort in the long run. If you don’t know what the right thing is, do the minimum necessary
to get the job done, at least until you figure out what the right thing is.
To do the Unix philosophy right, you have to be loyal to excellence. You have to believe that
software design is a craft worth all the intelligence, creativity, and passion you can muster. Otherwise
you won’t look past the easy, stereotyped ways of approaching design and implementation; you’ll
rush into coding when you should be thinking. You’ll carelessly complicate when you should be
relentlessly simplifying — and then you’ll wonder why your code bloats and debugging is so hard.
To do the Unix philosophy right, you have to value your own time enough never to waste it. If
someone has already solved a problem once, don’t let pride or politics suck you into solving it a
second time rather than re-using. And never work harder than you have to; work smarter instead,
and save the extra effort for when you need it. Lean on your tools and automate everything you can.
Software design and implementation should be a joyous art, a kind of high-level play. If this attitude
seems preposterous or vaguely embarrassing to you, stop and think; ask yourself what you’ve
forgotten. Why do you design software instead of doing something else to make money or pass
the time? You must have thought software was worthy of your passion once....
To do the Unix philosophy right, you need to have (or recover) that attitude. You need to care. You
need to play. You need to be willing to explore."

Taken from the book named The Art of UNIX Programming