Ellen Ullman
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.'Collection: Legal
Programming is the art of algorithm design and the craft of debugging errant code.Collection: Art
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.Collection: Failure
People talk about computer programmers as if computers are our whole lives. That's simply not true.Collection: Computers
Staring prejudice in the face imposes a cruel discipline: to structure your anger, to achieve a certain dignity, an angry dignity.Collection: Anger
Introduced in the 1960s, multitasking is an engineering strategy for making computers more efficient. Human beings are the slowest elements in a system.Collection: Computers
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.Collection: Computers
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.Collection: Computers
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.Collection: Computers
We build our computer (systems) the way we build our cities: over time, without a plan, on top of ruinsCollection: Cities
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.Collection: Errors
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.Collection: Yellow
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.Collection: Lying
Software engineering is not about right and wrong but only better and worseCollection: Engineering
The messiness cannot go into the program; it piles up around the programmer.Collection: Program
But you can't stop knowing something, can you?Collection: Knowing
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.Collection: Engineering
We build our computers the way we build our cities – over time, without a plan, on top of ruins.Collection: Programming
There is always one more bug to fix.Collection: Programming
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.Collection: Programming