Ellen Ullman Quotes & Sayings

But you can't stop knowing something, can you? — Ellen Ullman

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. — Ellen Ullman

Do I have to recite any further risks you have taken? How much you have not conformed? How much internal bravery this implies? — Ellen Ullman

Debugging: what an odd word. As if "bugging" were the job of putting in bugs, and debugging the task of removing them. But no. The job of putting in bugs is called programming. A programmer writes some code and inevitably makes the mistakes that result in the malfunctions called bugs. Then, for some period of time, normally longer than the time it takes to design and write the code in the first place, the programmer tries to remove the mistakes. — Ellen Ullman

But now what? Is this a ticket to a new understanding of my life, or a bomb that's going to blow up everything?

Consider one more possibility: that you remain essentially the same person you were, neither new nor destroyed. — Ellen Ullman

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. — Ellen Ullman

Software engineering is not about right and wrong but only better and worse — Ellen Ullman

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. — Ellen Ullman

We build our computer (systems) the way we build our cities: over time, without a plan, on top of ruins — Ellen Ullman

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. — Ellen Ullman