[pvnick]

I remember seeing one of Bob's posts earlier about how he struggled to finish this. Congratulations to him, I know how difficult it is to complete big projects (they say there's the first 90%, then when the finish line is in sight, there's the second 90%). His perseverance is inspiring!

[dudeson]

True, always the last 10% consume as much effort as the 90%

[Buttons840]

I've always phrased it tongue-in-cheek:

"The first 90% of the work takes 90% of the time. The last 10% of the work takes the other 90% of the time.

[rockybox]

That reminds me of the Pareto Principle (20/80):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle

I've found it to apply to many things in life.

Edit: why would this be downvoted?

[erichocean]

Because someone tried to upvote you on a smartphone, and Hacker News has a stubbornly non-mobile friendly design, with no undo.

[MarkTee]

Does anyone know what the rationale for not allowing users to undo votes is? I'd be happy even if it were only accessible for the first few minutes after the initial action...

There have been several times where I've accidentally upvoted low-quality (sometimes malicious) posts, and I never feel good about it.

[felipellrocha]

Lol. Yep. I accidentally do that every so often, and I always feel bad about it.

[DanBC]

Individual downvotes are sometimes errors and are usually quickly corrected.

[jamesbritt]

"Baseball is 90 percent mental. The other half is physical."

   -- Yogi Berra

Same math applies to software and book-writing

[jo_]

Writing software is 60% understanding the problem, 25% understanding the tools, 20% understainding requirements, and -5% hacking the solution to make it fit requirements.

[Raticide]

    Mental: 64.29%
    Physical: 35.71%

[kbenson]

The 90/90 rule fits a lot of things, to the point that whenever I see it, it seems cliche now. That doesn't make it any less applicable and relevant though, which is why we see it so much.