I'm obsessively detail-oriented.

If you optimize everything, you will always be unhappy.

Everyday life is like programming, I guess. If you love something you can put beauty into it.

The important thing, once you have enough to eat and a nice house, is what you can do for others, what you can contribute to the enterprise as a whole.

The manuals we got from IBM would show examples of programs and I knew I could do a heck of a lot better than that. So I thought I might have some talent.

An algorithm must be seen to be believed.

... the designer of a new system must not only be the implementor and the first large-scale user; the designer should also write the first user manual. ... If I had not participated fully in all these activities, literally hundreds of improvements would never have been made, because I would never have thought of them or perceived why they were important.