Maurice Wilkes: Quotes about parting

Maurice Wilkes was British computer scientist. Explore interesting quotes on parting.

Maurice Wilkes: 14 quotes0 likes

“By June 1949 people had begun to realize that it was not so easy to get programs right as at one time appeared. I well remember when this realization first came on me with full force.
The EDSAC was on the top floor of the building and the tape-punching and editing equipment one floor below. […] It was on one of my journeys between the EDSAC room and the punching equipment that "hesitating at the angles of stairs" the realization came over me with full force that a good part of the remainder of my life was going to be spent in finding errors in my own programs.”

Memoirs of a Computer Pioneer, MIT Press, 1985, p. 145. (The quoted phrase is from T. S. Eliot, Murder in the Cathedral.)

“Much of the early engineering development of digital computers was done in universities. A few years ago, the view was commonly expressed that universities had played their part in computer design, and that the matter could now safely be left to industry. […] Apart from the obvious functions of keeping in the public domain material that might otherwise be hidden, universities can make a special contribution by reason of their freedom from commercial considerations, including freedom from the need to follow the fashion.”

Sect. 1: Pioneering Days
"Computers Then and Now" (1968)

“A source of strength in the early days was that groups in various parts of the world were prepared to construct experimental computers without necessarily intending them to be the prototype for serial production. As a result, there became available a body of knowledge about what would work and what would not work.”

Sect. 1: Pioneering Days
"Computers Then and Now" (1968)