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" 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

Related Quotes:

" The computer's there to serve the human being, not vice versa. "

" 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. "

" I like mysteries. "

Ellen Ullman

Mysteries

" When I hear the word 'disruption,' in my mind, I think of all these people in the middle who were earning a living. We will sweep away all that money they were earning, and we will move that to the people at the top. "

" 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? "

" 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. "

" The condition of my personal workspace is my own business, as I see it. "

" People imagine that programming is logical, a process like fixing a clock. Nothing could be further from the truth. "

" Writing is a very isolating occupation. "

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

" The human mind, as it turns out, is messy. "

" Computer systems could not work without standards - an agreement among programs and systems about how they will exchange information. "

" I fear for the world the Internet is creating. "

" 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. "

" I won't use Twitter. Twitter posts are thought-farts. I don't care about unconsidered thoughts of the moment. "

" I really don't like books when characters are just bad or just good. "

" There's some intimacy in reading, some thoughtfulness that doesn't exist in machine experiences. "

" A computer is a general-purpose machine with which we engage to do some of our deepest thinking and analyzing. This tool brings with it assumptions about structuredness, about defined interfaces being better. Computers abhor error. "

" I'm a dark thoughts writer. "

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

" The world of programmers is not going to change on its own. "

" 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. "

" Our Constitution is designed to change very slowly. It's a feature, not a bug. "

" It is deep in our nature to make tools. "

" Y2K is showing everyone what technical people have been dealing with for years: the complex, muddled, bug-bitten systems we all depend on, and their nasty tendency toward the occasional disaster. "

" What happens to people like myself, who have been involved with computing for a long time, is that you begin to see how many of the 'new' ideas are simply old ones coming back into view on the swing of the pendulum, with new and faster hardware to back it up. "

" I don't consider myself a Jewish writer. "

" I don't know where anyone ever got the idea that technology, in and of itself, was a savior. Like all human-created 'progress,' computers are problematic, giving and taking away. "

" 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. "

" Our relationship to the computer is much like our relationship to the car: rich, complex, socially messy. "