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" There's some intimacy in reading, some thoughtfulness that doesn't exist in machine experiences. "
Ellen Ullman
Intimacy
Reading
Machine
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" I'm a pessimist. But I think I'd describe my pessimism as broken-hearted optimism. "
Ellen Ullman
Pessimism
Pessimist
Optimism
" My approach to being a self-taught programmer was to find out who was smart and who would be helpful, and these were - these are both men and women. And without learning from my co-workers, I never could've gone on in the profession as long as I did. "
Ellen Ullman
Find
Learning
Smart
" The condition of my personal workspace is my own business, as I see it. "
Ellen Ullman
Business
See
Personal
" Abhorring error is not necessarily positive. "
Ellen Ullman
Necessarily
Error
Positive
" The world of programmers is not going to change on its own. "
Ellen Ullman
Change
Programmers
World
" 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
Own
Light
Changes
" 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. "
Ellen Ullman
Sign
Always
Door
" All things change, but we always have to think: what are we leaving behind? "
Ellen Ullman
Leaving
Change
Behind
" The web is just another stunning point in the two-hundred-thousand-year history of human beings on earth. The taming of fire; the discovery of penicillin; the publication of 'Jane Eyre' - add anything you like. "
Ellen Ullman
Discovery
History
Fire
" 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
" After we have put our intimate secrets and credit card numbers online, what can prevent us from putting our elections there as well? "
Ellen Ullman
Secrets
Credit
Elections
" 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. "
Ellen Ullman
Know
Understand
Technology
" 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
" 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
" Software and digital devices are imbued with the values of their creators. "
Ellen Ullman
Digital
Values
Software
" Introduced in the 1960s, multitasking is an engineering strategy for making computers more efficient. Human beings are the slowest elements in a system. "
Ellen Ullman
Human
Engineering
Strategy
" Our relationship to the computer is much like our relationship to the car: rich, complex, socially messy. "
Ellen Ullman
Relationship
Rich
Messy
" People imagine that programming is logical, a process like fixing a clock. Nothing could be further from the truth. "
Ellen Ullman
Process
Truth
Clock
" What I hope is that those with the knowledge of the humanities break into the closed society where code gets written: invade it. "
Ellen Ullman
Knowledge
Break
Hope
" 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
" 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. "
Ellen Ullman
Early
World
Software
" The human mind, as it turns out, is messy. "
Ellen Ullman
Human
Human Mind
Messy
" 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. "
Ellen Ullman
Know
Water
New
" 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
" 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. "
Ellen Ullman
Earth
Life
Create
" 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. "
Ellen Ullman
People
View
Time
" 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. "
Ellen Ullman
Writing
My Life
People
" Watching a program run is not as revealing as reading its code. "
Ellen Ullman
Reading
Revealing
Code
" The ability to 'multitask,' to switch rapidly among many competing focuses of attention, has become the hallmark of a successful citizen of the 21st century. "
Ellen Ullman
Attention
Citizen
Become
" 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
People
Software