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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.

When I write software, I know that it will fail, either due to my own mistake, or due to some other cause.

However, writing software without defects is not sufficient. In my experience, it is at least as difficult to write software that is safe - that is, software that behaves reasonably under adverse conditions.

Writing is part intuition and part trial and error, but mostly it's very hard work.

I write my programs primarily for myself.

Writing software that's safe even in the presence of bugs makes the challenge even more interesting.

The problem, for me, with the writing programs is that they produce a terrible uniformity of product.

Writing is essentially an internal process.

I think computers are the ultimate writing tool. I'm a very slow writer, so I appreciate it every day.

I'm really good at making software for publishing.