Ellen Ullman

“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.”

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

“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.'”

“Multitasking, throughput, efficiency - these are excellent machine concepts, useful in the design of computer systems. But are they principles that nurture human thought and imagination?”

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

“What I hope is that those with the knowledge of the humanities break into the closed society where code gets written: invade it.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“Productivity has always been the justification for the prepackaging of programming knowledge. But it is worth asking about the sort of productivity gains that come from the simplifications of click-and-drag.”