Source Code My Beginnings Quotes

It’s impossible to overstate the unearned privilege I enjoyed: to be born in the rich United States is a big part of a winning birth lottery ticket, as is being born white and male in a society that advantages white men.

I politely told my doctor that instead of taking her advice, I’d dedicate myself to researching other options for my healing and care. She tried to deter me, repeating stats about infertility and cancer, and insisted I should begin birth control that day. I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that I was nervous to stand my ground, but that No! energy kept me from giving in.

That summer I thought a lot about how a person becomes the very best at something. Norton was such a commanding figure, peerless in his talent and professionalism. I tried to understand what he had that other programmers didn’t. What does it take to be 20 percent better than everyone else? How much is that just latent talent versus dedicated effort—being relentlessly focused and deliberate about performing better today than you did the day before? And then repeating that tomorrow and the next day and the next for years and years?

it was my mother who set our clocks ahead by eight minutes so we would be on mom time.

That fall we basically lived in that room in a loop of writing programs, having them fail, and trying again and again. Our grades suffered, our parents worried. But we learned and learned quickly. It was the most fun I’d ever had at school.

Her faith probably had a role in shaping her into an extremely principled person. Even back then, I could grasp that Gami followed a strict personal code of fairness and justice and integrity. A life well-lived meant living simply, giving your time and money to others, and, most of all, using your brain—staying engaged with the world. She never lost her temper, never gossiped, or criticized. She was incapable of guile. Often she was the smartest person in the room, but she was careful to let others shine. She was basically a shy person, but she had an inner confidence that presented as a Zen-like calm.

With wealth came the responsibility to give it away,

Ed proposed a plan to sell a laptop computer, but Pertec shot it down, unconvinced there was a market for such a thing.

At its core, science requires a wildly curious mind that can tame itself with discipline and skepticism.

The type of person who comes up with the Brilliant Idea isn’t often the best person to turn it into a business.

PRINT 2+2 4 OK With that, the first piece of software written for the first personal computer came to life.

The prize is the pleasure of finding the thing out. —Richard P. Feynman

Through our talks, I started to see that he was right: I was destined to win my imagined war with my parents. With each year my independence would grow. In time I would be on my own. All the while—then and into the future—my mother and father would love me. How great was that? Win the war and never lose their love. Without being prescriptive, Dr. Cressey helped me see that (A) my parents loved me; (B) I wouldn’t be under their roof forever; (C) they were actually my allies in terms of what really counted; (D) it was absurd to think that they had done anything wrong.

The Popular Electronics story hardly mentioned software. In order for people to easily write software programs on an Altair without flicking all those switches, they would need a teletype terminal and want a programming language like BASIC or FORTRAN tailored to the 8080 chip. But the authors said nothing about whether a language was available. Our bet was that they didn’t have one.

He laughed when I recited the Evans family phone number, forever inscribed in my memory. You boys shared an intellectual creativity that was remarkable, Marvin told me. Whatever you call it, I replied, would have likely continued had Kent not died: there’s a good chance we would have gone to the same college and been partners in some kind of venture. Marvin said he thought so too.