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I felt there was a need for us to build a new programming language. I also had come to see that Microsoft functions best when it controls its own destiny.

We wanted the language to feel fresh, fun, and rock solid.

We shifted our philosophy from being a computer mapping group that would support planners to the idea of building actual software that would be well engineered. Because at that time, our software was not well-engineered at all; it was basically built with project funding and for project work, largely by ourselves.

Computers have become more friendly, understandable, and lots of years and thought have been put into developing software to convince people that they want and need a computer.

When Paul Allen and I started Microsoft over 30 years ago, we had big dreams about software. We had dreams about the impact it could have.

I think that what computers have done is just disastrous to the language.

Humans are a social species more than any other, and in order to build a community, which for some reason humans have to do in order to live, we have to solve the communication problem. Language is the tool that was invented to solve that problem.

Language is an intrinsic part of who we are and what has, for good or evil, happened to us.

Language is too complex for a computer to understand. It's not going to be able to make sense of what people are saying en masse. We need a new type of discipline that puts together computer scientists and social scientists, who can add context to the situation.