Quotes on Software

Karma, memory, and desire are just the software of the soul. It's conditioning that the soul undergoes in order to create experience. And it's a cycle. In most people, the cycle is a conditioned response. They do the same things over and over again.

It's simply unrealistic to depend on secrecy for security in computer software. You may be able to keep the exact workings of the program out of general circulation, but can you prevent the code from being reverse-engineered by serious opponents? Probably not. The secret to strong security: less reliance on secrets.

From my first published paper in 1946, my obsession has been to objectify inner experiences, to demystify the software of human existence. How? By relating changes in external behavior, systematically and lawfully, to changes in the brain.

National security always matters, obviously. But the reality is that if you have an open door in your software for the good guys, the bad guys get in there, too.

Software is eating the world, but AI is going to eat software.

When done well, software is invisible.

To change the printout of the body, you must learn to rewrite the software of the mind.

We now know that something between 85 and 90 percent of most software product features are unwanted and unneeded by customers. That is an enourmous ammount of waste of time and money that ends up on the floor.

If you need to visualize the soul, think of it as a cross between a wolf howl, a photon and a dribble of dark molasses. But what it really is, as near as I can tell, is a packet of information. It's a program, a piece of hyperspatial software designed explicitly to interface with the Mystery. Not a mystery, mind you - the Mystery. The one that can never be solved.

The hardest part of design ... is keeping features out.

To be able to choose between proprietary software packages is to be able to choose your master. Freedom means not having a master.

Today many people are switching to free software for purely practical reasons. That is good, as far as it goes, but that isn't all we need to do! Attracting users to free software is not the whole job, just the first step.

Fighting patents one by one will never eliminate the danger of software patents, any more than swatting mosquitoes will eliminate malaria.

Companies in every industry need to assume that a software revolution is coming.

The most important single aspect of software development is to be clear about what you are trying to build.

Most software has a tiny essence that justifies its existence, everything after that is wants and desires mistaken for needs and necessities.

Software innovation, like almost every other kind of innovation, requires the ability to collaborate and share ideas with other people, and to sit down and talk with customers and get their feedback and understand their needs.

There's only one trick in software, and that is using a piece of software that's already been written.

I think a lot of great software has been written by people who are scratching a short-term itch, something which has been niggling them for ages, but in the back of their mind they’ve got a wonderful long-term plan.

There's nobody getting rich writing software that I know of.

... programming requires more concentration than other activities. It's the reason programmers get upset about 'quick interruptions' - such interruptions are tantamount to asking a juggler to keep three balls in the air and hold your groceries at the same time.