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" 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. "

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" 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

" I'm pretty bad at crying. "

" People talk about computer programmers as if computers are our whole lives. That's simply not true. "

" We don't have to live up to our computer. "

Ellen Ullman

Our

Live

" 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. "

" There is always one more bug to fix. "

" With every advance, you have to look over your shoulder and know what you're giving up - look over your shoulder and look at what falls away. "

" Introduced in the 1960s, multitasking is an engineering strategy for making computers more efficient. Human beings are the slowest elements in a system. "

" Truly new inventions take time to play out. "

" Some people hit a profession and just keep going deeper into it, making a life and making it more and more stable. That's not been my experience. I always want to try something new. "

" It will not work to keep asking men to change. Many have no real objective to do so. There's no reward for them. Why should they change? They're doing well inside the halls of coding. "

" Even simple fixes can bring the whole system down. "

" 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. "

" I feel the best villains are the ones you have feelings for. "

" Closed environments dominated the computing world of the 1970s and early '80s. An operating system written for a Hewlett-Packard computer ran only on H.P. computers; I.B.M. controlled its software from chips up to the user interfaces. "

" The brain is plastic, continuously changing its organization. "

" When you lose your Visa card, you get a new card with a new number, and any new charges with the old number are blocked. Why can't we do the same with Social Security numbers? "

" 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. "

" I came of technical age with UNIX, where I learned with power-greedy pleasure that you could kill a system right out from under yourself with a single command. "

" I think storytelling in general is how we really deeply know things. It's ancient. "

" Technology does not run backward. Once a technical capability is out there, it is out there for good. "

" No one in the government is seriously penalized when Social Security numbers are stolen and misused; only the number-holders suffer. "

" Writing is a very isolating occupation. "

" When knowledge passes into code, it changes state; like water turned to ice, it becomes a new thing, with new properties. We use it, but in a human sense, we no longer know it. "

" Computer programming has always been a self-taught, maverick occupation. "

" 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? "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" It is one thing for an artist to experiment on a canvas, but it's entirely different to experiment on a living creature. "

" 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. "