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Also, it's not engineering unless you take personal responsibility for your work, and accept personal liability for harms caused by your work. Most of you code monkeys can sod off, you're not engineers you're programmers and your entire industry is built on dodging liability.
From Varve at Write On. A bit harsh, but they're not wrong.
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I think we should always write about what we know, or what we wish to know.
Anaïs Nin in The Novel of the Future (via Warren Ellis).
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It’s too overwhelming to remember that at the end of every computer is a real person, a lot like you, whose birthday was last week, who has three best friends but nobody to spoon at night, and is personally affected by what you say. Even if we remember it right now, is it even possible to remember it next time we’re overwhelmed, or perhaps never forget it again?
Derek Sivers in A real person, a lot like you
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The Bill of Rights is a literal and absolute document. The First Amendment doesn’t say you have a right to speak out unless the government has a ‘compelling interest’ in censoring the Internet. The Second Amendment doesn’t say you have the right to keep and bear arms until some madman plants a bomb. The Fourth Amendment doesn’t say you have the right to be secure from search and seizure unless some FBI agent thinks you fit the profile of a terrorist. The government has no right to interfere with any of these freedoms under any circumstances.
Harry Browne, 1996 USA presidential candidate, Libertarian Party
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A few years ago I became convinced that a “programmer” is the equivalent of a medieval scribe. Scribes got money for their literacy. That was it. They had this skill which we now consider a fundamental requirement for democracy and/or civilization, a skill without which our world would fall apart. The skill was rare at the time, so they got paid just for having it. My original interpretation was that programmers are people who have a skill which has already become a fundamental requirement for democracy and/or civilization, and if there are any places where our world is falling apart, such as journalism, it’s because people in that field lack this fundamental skill. The moment you find a journalist who has this skill, you find capability and success. Similarly, technical literacy made the Obama campaign happen.
Giles Bowkett in I’m Not A Programmer, Because Programmers Don’t Exist
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As a Gen Y outsider, it seems that many of your generation have just the right blend of compassion and entrepreneurial spirit to make innovative differences in the world’s most difficult social problems. Many of you were, after all, raised by former hippies but born in the decade of greed and excess, right?
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Who cares about symbolism in Dickens? Dickens himself would be more interested in an essay about color or baseball.
Paul Graham in The Age of the Essay
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A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
Robert A. Heinlein (via Wikiquote)
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[Computing is] a place where you don’t have to be a Ph.D. or anything else. It’s a place where you can still be an artisan. People are willing to pay you if you’re any good at all, and you have plenty of time for screwing around.
Alan Kay in 1972
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If you’ve never written anything thoughtful, then you’ve never had any difficult, important, or interesting thoughts. That’s the secret: people who don’t write, are people who don’t think.
The secret about writing that no one has the balls to tell you by Pete Michaud