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" 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

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

" 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. "

" Staring prejudice in the face imposes a cruel discipline: to structure your anger, to achieve a certain dignity, an angry dignity. "

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

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

" I broke into the ranks of computing in the early 1980s, when women were just starting to poke their shoulder pads through crowds of men. There was no legal protection against 'hostile environments for women.' "

" 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? "

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

" I'm pretty bad at crying. "

" Programming is the art of algorithm design and the craft of debugging errant code. "

" I was a girl who came into the clubhouse, into the treehouse, with the sign on the door saying, 'No girls allowed,' and the reception was not always a good one. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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? "

" Y2K has challenged a belief in digital technology that has been almost religious. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" When I am around people I most admire, I tend to hug the wall. "

" 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. "

" I think technical people now should learn literature, because literature teaches you a great deal about how - the depths and variety of human imagination. "

" It's possible to let technology absorb what we know and then re-express it in intricate mechanisms - parts and circuit boards and software objects - mechanisms we can use but do not understand in crucial ways. This not-knowing is fine while everything works as we expected. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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" The act of voting, to put it in computing terms, is a question of user interface. "

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