Computer science … jobs should be way more interesting than even going to Wall Street or being a lawyer--or, I can argue, than anything but perhaps biology, and there it's just a tie.

But the improvements will happen faster and last longer if we can channel market forces, including innovation that's tailored to the needs of the poorest, to complement what governments and nonprofits do. We need a system that draws in innovators and businesses in a far better way than we do today.

The next time someone tells you we can trim the budget by cutting aid, I hope you will ask whether it will come at the cost of more people dying.

Good programmers stay open minded to that even though there is no obvious way to improve what they've done they... they keep looking and they listen to what other people have to say.

There's a true schizophrenia where if you say to voters, you know, do you think the federal government spends too much money and they should spend less, they say yeah, absolutely. Then you name specific things, like Pell grants for students and they say, no, not that. How 'bout NIH, medical research funding? Nah, you really shouldn't cut that. And pretty soon you've proved that what the American public is against is arithmetic.

I believe that if you show people the problems and you show them the solutions they will be moved to act.

You know, I'm a big believer in touch and digital reading, but I still think that some mixture of voice, the pen and a real keyboard - in other words a netbook - will be the mainstream on that.