"Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.” – Vincent van Gogh, Dutch Post-Impressionist Painter.

I ran across this quote recently and it struck me that it's expresses a thought I've had for some time. Instant, magical success isn't often what it appears. Anyone that seems to have sprung up overnight with success in anything has often spent a lot of time getting ready.

Outside of lottery winners, of course. If you bought a ticket, that's instant success. Unless you buy a dozen every week, then you've likely been doing your own (poor) preparation over time.

Whether it's software, sports, business, anything that takes off, goes viral, or suddenly catches the public's collective eye is the result of a lot of small things. Practice, learning, continuous improvement. It's a formula that works in music, in sports, in manufacturing, and in software.

Perhaps the most important part of this quote is the ending. Things have to be brought together. In software, we work in teams, and we have to coordinate and collaborate. Whether with other human developers, AI agents, or Operations. We have to learn to ensure our efforts, our knowledge, our evolution works together. This might be especially important in ensuring database and application code changes mesh well. That's becoming a concern for more organizations, and more management that realizes that the database has to become a part of the software development life cycle. Either developers need to learn more, or work closer with database staff.

We can do great things, we can build amazing systems, but it takes effort, and it takes teamwork.