Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Well, limbo is not a good place to be.
Interleaf is based on the formatting process.
Not all smart people work at Sun Microsystems.
I just don't like to lose what's in the window.
Systems are going to get a lot more sophisticated.
I wish we hadn't used all the keys on the keyboard.
But with Interleaf I don't even have a spell program.
Take responsibility for the things you build and invent.
I think multiple levels of undo would be wonderful, too.
But no, I don't generally have trouble with spelling mistakes.
It is formatted, and I'm tired of using vi. I get really bored.
The point is that you want to have a system that is responsive.
The next step after cheap is free, and after free is disposable.
The standard definition of AI is that which we don't understand.
I think editors have to come out of a certain kind of community.
Most of the bright people don't work for you - no matter who you are.
Bitmap display is media compatible with dot matrix or laser printers.
Document preparation systems will also require large screen displays.
The reason I use ed is that I don't want to lose what's on the screen.
We can't simply do our science and not worry about the ethical issues.
There are always more smart people outside your company than within it.
I think the Macintosh proves that everyone can have a bitmapped display.
Operating systems are like underwear — nobody really wants to look at them.
I was surprised about vi going in, though, I didn't know it was in System V.
I think one of the interesting things is that vi is really a mode-based editor.
Sometimes the easiest way to get something done is to be a little naive about it.
You can't solve a problem with the management of technology with more technology.
I had almost rewritten all of the display code for windows, and that was when I gave up.
We have to encourage the future we want rather than trying to prevent the future we fear.
A bomb is blown up only once—but one bot can become many, and quickly get out of control.
Interleaf is very nice. I expect there to be a lot of competition for programs like that.
I started to write a new editor not too long ago and had it about half done after two days.
Just about every computer on the market today runs Unix, except the Mac and nobody cares about it.
That lack of programmability is probably what ultimately will doom vi. It can't extend its domain.
I think the wonderful thing about vi is that it has such a good market share because we gave it away.
I got tired of people complaining that it was too hard to use UNIX because the editor was too complicated.
I think the hard thing about all these tools is that it takes a fair amount of effort to become proficient.
The fundamental problem with vi is that it doesn't have a mouse and therefore you've got all these commands.
What's your personal computer, anyways? Your personal computer should be something that's always on your person.
You can't prove anything about a program written in C or FØRTRAN. It's really just Peek and Poke with some syntactic sugar.
Today scientists, technologists, businessmen, engineers don't have any personal responsibility for the consequences of their actions.
And once an intelligent robot exists, it is only a small step to a robot species - to an intelligent robot that can make evolved copies of itself.
You can drive a car by looking in the rear view mirror as long as nothing is ahead of you. Not enough software professionals are engaged in forward thinking.
The best way to do research is to make a radical assumption and then assume it's true. For me, I use the assumption that object oriented programming is the way to go.
I remember right after Carter got elected, I was sitting in my apartment in Albany, CA, on a Saturday listening to people call Carter and ask stupid questions while I designed the screen editor.
I think Unix is a great system - especially for running data centers - because it is very mature, very reliable, very scalable. But when I want to go out and populate small devices, I think Java.
So Chuck and I looked at that and we hacked on em for a while, and eventually we ripped the stuff out of em and put some of it into what was then called en, which was really ed with some em features.
I think it killed the performance on a lot of the systems in the Labs for years because everyone had their own copy of it, but it wasn't being shared, and so they wasted huge amounts of memory back when memory was expensive.
Although humankind inherently "desires to know", if open access to, and unlimited development of, knowledge henceforth puts us all in clear danger of extinction, then common sense demands that we re-examine our reverence for knowledge.
Given the incredible power of these new technologies, shouldn't we be asking how we can best coexist with them? And if our own extinction is a likely, or even possible, outcome of our technological development, shouldn't we proceed with great caution?