Wisdom ++ !!

This is something that I read recently and had a profound impact on me.
Must say changed my outlook about most of my professional life.
Things I Wish I Learned in Engineering School by Rick Cattell

And while we are at it , this is something I wanted to post after reading one of kousik's comments some time ago about optimisation.
This is a post I read at James Gosling's site a while ago - this has been my philosophy always : must say I err on the side of spending more time on optimisation than writing code sometimes , but that is besides the point.
What I have found is that most of the axioms - like "premature optimisation is evil" , some of the xp methologies , etc seems to be targetted at the general programmer audience.
Most of the halfway decent guys seem to be immune or above this - they have their own set of rules , which frankly are not applicable to the average programmer.

My thoughts on this subject have not yet crystalised , but the general direction is that I will have to unlearn most of these axioms to improve , since by me assuming them in the first place limits the extent to which I can improve ..... not food , but a barnful of fodder for thought this weekend !!!
Kousik's post about
Simultaneous contract signing , writing a netbeans module are the ome of the others that are eating my head !!