Bill Atkinson Quotes

Software Engineering might be science; but that's not what I do. I'm a hacker, not an engineer.

There are two methods in software design. One is to make the program so simple, there are obviously no errors. The other is to make it so complicated, there are no obvious errors.

I have never written a line of commercial code in my life. Nor should I.

The most sought-after candidates in the world today by companies like mine are people who make computer software - there's a shortage of talent.

I know one business, and that's how to make software.

I designed and developed an unbelievable number of applications early in my life.

We're the toolmakers. Our developers are the real creative geniuses.

Software eventually and necessarily gained the same respect as any other discipline.

Learning to program has no more to do with designing interactive software than learning to touch type has to do with writing poetry

Anyone can squash a bug but all professors of this world couldn't build one.

I majored in Computer Science at U.C. Berkeley and worked as a software developer for a couple of years. Then I taught high school computer science for over a decade and a half in Oakland, California.

If software's the only thing in your bag of tools, I'm not going to give you great odds.

There's not a long track record of people leaving professional sports to become a software developer.

It gives you great pleasure to know that millions of developers, day to day, make their living using the software that you created.

After graduating in 1973 I went into the programming field.

Software development is technical activity conducted by human beings.

Code writers, they are my idols.

I don't program or code or anything like that.

I'm kind of a retired software engineer. I don't write code anymore.

The only thing I understand deeply, because in my teens I was thinking about it, and every year of my life, is software. So I'll never be hands-on on anything except software.

A lot of people assume that creating software is purely a solitary activity where you sit in an office with the door closed all day and write lots of code.

One of the first major programming projects that I worked on when I was growing up in Ireland, back just coding by myself, was a programming language. Then I spent a bunch of time working on a new web framer. Just back-end things to make it easier to go in and build things on top of, do other development.

Whether you draw diagrams that generate code or you type at a browser, you are coding.

I was a programmer.

I enjoy evangelizing Java. In my heart of hearts, I'm an engineer, and what makes me happy is building something that works and having someone use it. That's cool.