How Do You Know When It's Finished

[Tom Watson]

The great Florentine bronze master, Ghiberti, had a man in the yard behind his shop whose sole task was to polish the finished pieces.

The story goes that an old man would daily stop at the gates to the yard and watch the polisher at his work.

After some time had gone by the old man finally spoke up and asked this question of the polisher:

"How do you know when it is finished?"

The polisher stopped his work for a moment and said to the old man:

"It is never finished - one day they simply come and take it away."

Regards,

Tom Watson

[LD]

I spent an inordinate amount of time doing the research for my MS degree and kept finding new avenues to explore. The department chair was getting upset about this and finally told me that if I did not finish in three months he'd throw me out. I made it with a week to spare. I still didn't think it was Really Finished ...

[Swingman]

Babbage's disease ...

[PCPaul]

"A great work of art is never finished, just abandoned"

[TDDriver]

It's finished when SWMBO says it's finished.

[phorbin]

The making of great art starts and stops closer to perfection.