Bill Joy Quotations

Well, limbo is not a good place to be.

I remember right after Carter got elected, I was sitting in my apartment in Albany, CA, on a Saturday listening to people call Carter and ask stupid questions while I designed the screen editor.

I started to write a new editor not too long ago and had it about half done after two days.

Systems are going to get a lot more sophisticated.

The point is that you want to have a system that is responsive.

I just don't like to lose what's in the window.

I think the hard thing about all these tools is that it takes a fair amount of effort to become proficient.

I had almost rewritten all of the display code for windows, and that was when I gave up.

I got tired of people complaining that it was too hard to use UNIX because the editor was too complicated.

That lack of programmability is probably what ultimately will doom vi. It can't extend its domain.

I think multiple levels of undo would be wonderful, too.

I think the Macintosh proves that everyone can have a bitmapped display.

I think the wonderful thing about vi is that it has such a good market share because we gave it away.

I think it killed the performance on a lot of the systems in the Labs for years because everyone had their own copy of it, but it wasn't being shared, and so they wasted huge amounts of memory back when memory was expensive.

But no, I don't generally have trouble with spelling mistakes.

Document preparation systems will also require large screen displays.

I think editors have to come out of a certain kind of community.

Bitmap display is media compatible with dot matrix or laser printers.

I wish we hadn't used all the keys on the keyboard.

The fundamental problem with vi is that it doesn't have a mouse and therefore you've got all these commands.

But with Interleaf I don't even have a spell program.

I think one of the interesting things is that vi is really a mode-based editor.

I was surprised about vi going in, though, I didn't know it was in System V.

Interleaf is very nice. I expect there to be a lot of competition for programs like that.

It is formatted, and I'm tired of using vi. I get really bored.

The reason I use ed is that I don't want to lose what's on the screen.

So Chuck and I looked at that and we hacked on em for a while, and eventually we ripped the stuff out of em and put some of it into what was then called en, which was really ed with some em features.

Not all smart people work at Sun Microsystems.

I think Unix is a great system -- especially for running data centers -- because it is very mature, very reliable, very scalable. But when I want to go out and populate small devices, I think Java.

Just about every computer on the market today runs Unix, except the Mac and nobody cares about it.

And once an intelligent robot exists, it is only a small step to a robot species - to an intelligent robot that can make evolved copies of itself.

I think it is no exaggeration to say we are on the cusp of the further perfection of extreme evil, an evil whose possibility spreads well beyond that which weapons of mass destruction bequeathed to the nation-states, on to a surprising and terrible empowerment of extreme individuals.

You can't prove anything about a program written in C or FØRTRAN. It's really just Peek and Poke with some syntactic sugar.

What's your personal computer, anyways? Your personal computer should be something that's always on your person.

We can't simply do our science and not worry about the ethical issues.

Operating systems are like underwear — nobody really wants to look at them.

A bomb is blown up only once—but one bot can become many, and quickly get out of control.

You can drive a car by looking in the rear view mirror as long as nothing is ahead of you. Not enough software professionals are engaged in forward thinking.

The standard definition of AI is that which we don't understand.

If you stay up late and you have another hour of work to do, you can just stay up another hour later without running into a wall and having to stop. Whereas it might take three or four hours if you start over, you might finish if you just work that extra hour. If you're a morning person, the day always intrudes a fixed amount of time in the future. So it's much less efficient. Which is why I think computer people tend to be night people - because a machine doesn't get sleepy.

Today scientists, technologists, businessmen, engineers don't have any personal responsibility for the consequences of their actions.

The Open Source theorem says that if you give away source code, innovation will occur. Certainly, Unix was done this way... However, the corollary states that the innovation will occur elsewhere. No matter how many people you hire. So the only way to get close to the state of the art is to give the people who are going to be doing the innovative things the means to do it. That's why we had built-in source code with Unix. Open source is tapping the energy that's out there.

There are a couple of people in the world who can really program in C or FØRTRAN. They write more code in less time than it takes for other programmers. Most programmers aren't that good. The problem is that those few programmers who crank out code aren't interested in maintaining it.

The next step after cheap is free, and after free is disposable.

Take responsibility for the things you build and invent.

You can't solve a problem with the management of technology with more technology.

Although humankind inherently "desires to know", if open access to, and unlimited development of, knowledge henceforth puts us all in clear danger of extinction, then common sense demands that we re-examine our reverence for knowledge.

Given the incredible power of these new technologies, shouldn't we be asking how we can best coexist with them? And if our own extinction is a likely, or even possible, outcome of our technological development, shouldn't we proceed with great caution?

There are always more smart people outside your company than within it.

The best way to do research is to make a radical assumption and then assume it's true. For me, I use the assumption that object oriented programming is the way to go.

We have to encourage the future we want rather than trying to prevent the future we fear.

Interleaf is based on the formatting process.

Sometimes the easiest way to get something done is to be a little naive about it.

Most of the bright people don't work for you - no matter who you are.

Jini is different from the PC because there's no central control, no monopolist pulling the strings.

What's your personal computer, anyway? Your personal computer should be something that's always on your person.

As far as I know we also almost bought Apple once. We almost merged with Apple two other times.