Ellen Ullman Quotes
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The programmer, who needs clarity, who must talk all day to a machine that demands declarations, hunkers down into a low-grade annoyance. It is here that the stereotype of the programmer, sitting in a dim room, growling from behind Coke cans, has its origins. The disorder of the desk, the floor; the yellow Post-It notes everywhere; the whiteboards covered with scrawl: all this is the outward manifestation of the messiness of human thought. The messiness cannot go into the program; it piles up around the programmer.
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I have a suggestion for Microsoft — no fancy programming required. Just let us users hang out a 'Do Not Disturb' sign. Then leave us alone. We're dreaming.
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To be a programmer is to develop a carefully managed relationship with error. There's no getting around it. You either make your accomodations with failure, or the work will become intolerable.
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The messiness cannot go into the program; it piles up around the programmer.
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I've always written. I'm from an older generation of programmers [who] did not come out of engineering. [A]ll sorts of people were drawn in from the social sciences and humanities.
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But you can't stop knowing something, can you?
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The corollary of constant change is ignorance. This is not often talked about: we computer experts barely know what we're doing. We're good at fussing and figuring out. We function well in a sea of unknowns. Our experience has only prepared us to deal with confusion. A programmer who denies this is probably lying, or else is densely unaware of himself.
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'We build our computers the way we build our cities-over time, without a plan, on top of ruins.'