Ellen Ullman famous quotes

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

#Cities #Way #Ruins

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

#Engineering #Software #Software Engineering

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

#Lying #Ignorance #Sea

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

#Knowing

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

#Yellow #Needs #Machines

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

#Engineering #People #Humanity

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

#Program #Messiness

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

#Errors #Programmers

To justify God's ways to man.

I had casually rented an apartment that cost $75 a month because I expected my writing to pay my way.

You just can't let anything or anyone get in the way of who you are.

Definition, rationality, and structure are ways of seeing, but they become prisons when they blank out other ways of seeing.

It is time, therefore, to abandon the superstition that natural science cannot be regarded as logically respectable until philosophers have solved the problem of induction. The problem of induction is, roughly speaking, the problem of finding a way to prove that certain empirical generalizations which are derived from past experience will hold good also in the future.

Someday was the thing he had, because it was a lot harder to ruin than today.

Ruins, for me, are the beginning. With the debris, you can construct new ideas. They are symbols of a beginning.

It's better to live down a scandal than to ruin one's life.

The fixation of the theater in one language--written words, music, lights, noises--betokens its imminent ruin.

You will ruin no more lives as you ruined mine. You will wring no more hearts as you wrung mine. I will free the world of a poisonous thing. Take that, you hound, and that! - and that! - and that! - and that!