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" I am not intimidated by puerile boys acting like pre-teens. "
Ellen Ullman
Like
I Am
Intimidated
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" Evolution, dismissed as a sloppy programmer, has seen fit to create us as a wild amalgam of everything that came before us: except for the realm of insects, the whole history of life on earth is inscribed within our bodies. "
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" After we have put our intimate secrets and credit card numbers online, what can prevent us from putting our elections there as well? "
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" You can only get a beginner's mind once. "
Ellen Ullman
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" To be a programmer is to develop a carefully managed relationship with error. There's no getting around it. You either make your accommodations with failure, or the work will become intolerable. "
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" Writing was a way to get away from my life as a programmer, so I wanted to write about other things, but of course nobody wanted to publish another story about a family, unless it was extraordinary. When I began writing about my life as a programmer, however, people were interested. "
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" I think technical people now should learn literature, because literature teaches you a great deal about how - the depths and variety of human imagination. "
Ellen Ullman
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" It has occurred to me that if people really knew how software got written, I'm not sure they'd give their money to a bank or get on an airplane ever again. "
Ellen Ullman
Airplane
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Software
" I hate the new word processors that want to tell you, as you're typing, that you made a mistake. I have to turn off all that crap. It's like, shut up - I'm thinking now. I will worry about that sort of error later. I'm a human being. I can still read this, even though it's wrong. You stupid machine, the fact that you can't is irrelevant to me. "
Ellen Ullman
You
Thinking
Stupid
" The biggest problem is that people have stopped being critical about the role of the computer in their lives. These machines went from being feared as Big Brother surrogates to being thought of as metaphors for liberty and individual freedom. "
Ellen Ullman
Thought
Big
Brother
" I don't consider myself a Jewish writer. "
Ellen Ullman
Jewish
Writer
Consider
" I think that focusing all experiences through the lens of the Internet is an example of not being able to see history through the eyes of others, to be so enamored of one's present time that one cannot see that the world was once elsewise and was not about you. "
Ellen Ullman
History
Think
Time
" The act of voting, to put it in computing terms, is a question of user interface. "
Ellen Ullman
Question
Act
Interface
" There's some intimacy in reading, some thoughtfulness that doesn't exist in machine experiences. "
Ellen Ullman
Intimacy
Reading
Machine
" I used to pass by a large computer system with the feeling that it represented the summed-up knowledge of human beings. It reassured me to think of all those programs as a kind of library in which our understanding of the world was recorded in intricate and exquisite detail. "
Ellen Ullman
Detail
Knowledge
Me
" I think many people have wonderful stories inside them and the talent to tell those stories. But the writing life, with its isolation and uncertain outcomes, keeps most from the task. "
Ellen Ullman
Writing
Life
People
" Human thinking can skip over a great deal, leap over small misunderstandings, can contain ifs and buts in untroubled corners of the mind. But the machine has no corners. Despite all the attempts to see the computer as a brain, the machine has no foreground or background. "
Ellen Ullman
Great
Thinking
See
" Computer systems could not work without standards - an agreement among programs and systems about how they will exchange information. "
Ellen Ullman
How
Work
Will
" UNIX always presumes you know what you're doing. You're the human being, after all, and it is a mere operating system. "
Ellen Ullman
Always
Doing
You
" So many people for so many years have promoted technology as the answer to everything. The economy wasn't growing: technology. Poor people: technology. Illness: technology. As if, somehow, technology in and of itself would be a solution. Yet machine values are not always human values. "
Ellen Ullman
Growing
Values
Technology
" Multitasking, throughput, efficiency - these are excellent machine concepts, useful in the design of computer systems. But are they principles that nurture human thought and imagination? "
Ellen Ullman
Thought
Imagination
Design
" All things change, but we always have to think: what are we leaving behind? "
Ellen Ullman
Leaving
Change
Behind
" I'm a dark thoughts writer. "
Ellen Ullman
Dark
Writer
Thoughts
" I fear for the world the Internet is creating. "
Ellen Ullman
Internet
World
Creating
" I like the little semi-competencies of human beings, I realize. Governance, after all, is a messy business, a world of demi-solutions and compromise, where ideals are tarnished regularly. "
Ellen Ullman
Business
Compromise
World
" With code, what it means is what it does. It doesn't express, not really. It's a very bounded conversation. And writing is not bounded. That's what's hard about it. "
Ellen Ullman
Hard
Conversation
Code
" Programmers seem to be changing the world. It would be a relief, for them and for all of us, if they knew something about it. "
Ellen Ullman
Seem
Relief
Knew
" Reading code is like reading all things written: You have to scribble, make a mess, remind yourself that the work comes to you through trial and error and revision. "
Ellen Ullman
Mess
Yourself
You
" Productivity has always been the justification for the prepackaging of programming knowledge. But it is worth asking about the sort of productivity gains that come from the simplifications of click-and-drag. "
Ellen Ullman
Worth
Always
Programming
" When I am writing, and occasionally achieve single focus and presence, I finally feel that is where I'm supposed to be. Everything else is kind of anxiety. "
Ellen Ullman
Feel
Anxiety
Focus
" Through the miracle of natural genetic recombination, each child, with the sole exception of an identical twin, is conceived as a unique being. Even the atmosphere of the womb works its subtle changes, and by the time we emerge into the light, we are our own persons. "
Ellen Ullman
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Changes