Don't ever make the mistake [of thinking] that you can design something better than what you get from ruthless massively parallel trial-and-error with a feedback cycle. That's giving your intelligence much too much credit.
Founder and coordinator, Linux kernel OS
Know the foundations of computer science: algorithms, machine architectures, data structures, etc. Don't just blindly copy techniques from application to application. Know what you are doing, that it works, and why it works.
C++ creator
I think in any kind of design, you must drive for simplicity all the time. If you don't, complexity will nail you. Dealing with complexity is hard enough.
Founder and lead designer of Java
It's easy to make mistakes that only come out much later, after you've already implemented a lot of code. You'll realize Oh I should have used a different type of data structure. Start over from scratch.
Guido van Rossum, Python creator