I note that Willie H. Soon is also not highly ranked amongst climate science authors. See <http://www.eecg.utoronto.ca/~prall/climate/climate_authors_table.html>.

Find a lawyer who will work in the hopes of getting a portion of the settlement. That way, the cost to you will be minimal.

Why would you believe an anonymous someone who, by their own admission, went out of their way to avoid paying customary fees to the organizer of the event?

I'm inclined to agree that software engineering isn't sufficiently mature to be an engineering discipline. It's possible to analyze a bridge to determine under what conditions it might collapse. I can't do that for the software I create. The best I can do is to say that under these inputs and these conditions, it performed correctly.

I would add that you should try to hide the implementation of your customizations behind modules that can be easily adapted to use a standard extension if and when one becomes available.

I'm currently working my way through "The Pragmatic Programmer" by Andrew Hunt and David Thomas. It contains much generic wisdom and considerable scope.

While I agree with your thesis, in general, the above assertion is false given the halting problem.