People talk about computer programmers as if computers are our whole lives. That's simply not true.

The messiness cannot go into the program; it piles up around the programmer.

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

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.

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

But you can't stop knowing something, can you?

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.

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.

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

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

She may be an old flame, but she still smokin'.

The purpose of life is to be happy.

IN April 1882 my father died; and I was at once whirled out of my land of dreams into a very different sphere.

There is no such thing as completion. These are only stages in an endless progression. There are no final outcomes or decisions, since nothing ever stays the same.

I say that I represent this movement because my intellectual allegiances are clearly European, not African.

Very often it's really inconvenient - who you fall in love with. You can't really control it.

Up to 80 percent of the fish that we catch spend at least part of their lives in estuaries.

It is a good thing to write for the amusement of the public, but it is a far higher and nobler thing to write for their instruction, their profit, their actual and tangible benefit.

When you hear my records today hear a vanilla sounding artist with no black inflection, although I was trying to imitate what I heard.

I would say if you are going to party, show up on time to work.