"Neither of us had the easy confidence of someone like Harry Minor, who could gleefully complain of "not knowing a fucking thing," then set about kno… - Ellen Ullman

Code and forget, code and forget: programming as a collective exercise in incremental forgetting.

Then, just when it seemed that only the barest of bugs survived, there would be a new version of the software. And with that, a fresh opportunity for introducing bugs.

The corollary of constant change is ignorance. This is not often talked about: we computer experts barely know what we're doing. We're good at fussing and figuring out. We function well in a sea of unknowns. Our experience has only prepared us to deal with confusion. A programmer who denies this is probably lying, or else is densely unaware of himself.