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" 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

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

" 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. "

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

" Each new tool we create ends an old relationship with the world and starts a new one. And we're changed by that relationship, inevitably. It changes the way we live, changes our patterns, changes our social organization. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Genetics is where we come from. It's deeply natural to want to know. "

" I like mysteries. "

Ellen Ullman

Mysteries

" 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. "

" With all the attention given to the personal computer, it's hard to remember that other companion machine in the room - the printer. "

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

" What I hope is that those with the knowledge of the humanities break into the closed society where code gets written: invade it. "

" 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. "

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

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

" I am not intimidated by puerile boys acting like pre-teens. "

Ellen Ullman

I Am

Intimidated

" Tools are not neutral. The computer is not a neutral tool. "

" I don't like the idea that Facebook controls how people express themselves and changes it periodically according to whatever algorithms they use to figure out what they should do or the whim of some programmer or some CEO. That bothers me a great deal. "

" 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. "

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

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

" Writing is a very isolating occupation. "

" 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. "

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

" 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

" 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. "

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

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

" 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? "