I'm reading Richard Bartle's old column on game design over at Skotos. It's a real eye opener. You might know Mister Bartle from his creation of MUDs. In the articles he says a lot of real obvious things I never realised before, and they can all be applied to normal programming. It's got me scribbling down notes like I'm in a lecture or something.
A model of the human body using organs as objects, each with its own specific functionality, might do 95% of what you wanted it to do. That’s still only 95%, though. A model based on the central nervous system might do 100%.
That's some good shit right there.