Is it possible that software is not like anything else, that it is meant to be discarded: that the whole point is to always see it as a soap bubble?

I think that it's extraordinarily important that we in computer science keep fun in computing. When it started out, it was an awful lot of fun. Of course, the paying customers got shafted every now and then, and after a while we began to take their complaints seriously. We began to feel as if we really were responsible for the successful, error-free perfect use of these machines. I don't think we are. I think we're responsible for stretching them, setting them off in new directions, and keeping fun in the house. I hope the field of computer science never loses its sense of fun.

Is it possible that software is not like anything else, that it is meant to be discarded: that the whole point is to always see it as a soap bubble?

Programmers are not to be measured by their ingenuity and their logic but by the completeness of their case analysis.

Often it is the means that justify the ends: goals advance technique and technique survives even when goal structures crumble.

Optimization hinders evolution. Everything should be built top-down, except the first time. Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.

In man-machine symbiosis, it is man who must adjust: The machines can't.