El Presidente is not an easy man to please.

We were discussing today whether there is in fact any room between slap-dash and over-engineered in his book. There probably is a sweet spot, but it's tiny.

Mark suggested that it's a bit like shower controls. You know - the temperature control usually has 90° of play or more. Why is it, then, that the range of temperatures suitable for organic life are usually covered by 1° of that?

Hmmm. Tracey then pointed out a car's clutch pedal as another example of this. Useless over all but a tiny part of its movement.

She then told us that the first example that came to her mind was, uh, anatomical. She refused to elaborate. I honestly haven't a clue as to what she might have been referring to. Any suggestions?

When eating a Kelly's take-away curry for lunch, don't get any on your fingers. If you do, don't rub your eyes thereafter.

"The main thing which would keep it there [Java] for me would be the APIs (both Sun's APIs and open source APIs)."

Anthony has mentioned Java's library as a reason for choosing Java before. But coming from the Python side, I can't see what Sun's Java library has that the Python Standard Library doesn't.

What am I missing?