an infinite number of small reversible steps

Stefano Mazzocchi’s email overfloweth with quotable wisdom:

It’s exactly like thermodynamics, where a infinite number of small reversible steps is more efficient than a small number of big but not-reversible steps.

…good ideas and bad code build communities, the other three combinations do not. This is extremely hard to understand, it’s probably the most counter-intuitive thing about open source dynamics.