I'm not a skilled programmer (but would like to be someday). Would someone kindly resolve what appears to me to be a contradiction between the following?

1(a) Torvalds: "Bad programmers worry about the code. Good programmers worry about data structures and their relationships."

1(b) Pike Rule 5: "Data dominates. If you've chosen the right data structures and organized things well, the algorithms will almost always be self-evident. Data structures, not algorithms, are central to programming."

— versus —

2. Perlis 2: "Functions delay binding; data structures induce binding. Moral: Structure data late in the programming process."

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Ignorant as I am, I read these to advise that I ought to put data structures centrally, first, foremost — but not until the end of the programming process.