The NTP Classic devs fell into investing increasing effort merely fighting the friction of their own limiting assumptions because they lacked something that Dave Mills had and I have and any systems architect necessarily must have – professional courage. It’s the same quality that a surgeon needs to cut into a patient – the confidence, bordering on arrogance, that you do have what it takes to go in and solve the problem even if there’s bound to be blood on the floor before you’re done.

ESR