Interfaces Quotes

First, I'd like to see the basic tools such as compilers, debuggers, profilers, database interfaces, GUI builders, CAD tools, and so forth fully support the ISO standard. ~ Bjarne Stroustrup

Although humans today remain more capable than machines for many tasks, by 2030 machine capabilities will have increased to the point that humans will have become the weakest component in a wide array of systems and processes. Humans and machines will need to become far more closely coupled, through improved human-machine interfaces and by direct augmentation of human performance ~ Werner J. A. Dahm

It's often the case that teams working in agile processes do not actually go back to improve the user interface of the software. But, as the saying goes, "it's not iterative if you only do it once." Teams need to make a commitment to continuous improvement, and that means not simply refactoring code and addressing technical debt but also reworking and improving user interfaces. Teams must embrace the concept of UX debt and make a commitment to continuous improvement of the user experience. ~ Jeff Gothelf

Originally, I wanted a machine that would cost $100. My idea was to spend nothing on the console technology so all the money could be spent on improving the interface and software. If we hadn't used NAND flash memory and other pricey parts, we might have succeeded. ~ Shigeru Miyamoto

The most effective learning takes place in the classroom, where you can easily raise your hand, engage in spontaneous discussions with classmates and faculty, turn to the person next to you to ask for clarification, or approach the professor after class or during office hours to ask questions or exchange viewpoints in a way that practically guarantees an instant response and is not constrained by typing, software interfaces, or waiting for a response. ~ Ian Lamont

Your journey is to see how deeply you can interface your mind with infinity. That's the journey of a monk - to see. ~ Frederick Lenz

graphical user interfaces make
easy tasks easy, while command line interfaces make difficult tasks possible ~ William E. Shotts Jr.

Love is not our only emotional need. Psychologists have observed that among our basic needs are the need for security, self-worth, and significance. Love, however, interfaces with all of those. If I feel loved by my spouse, I can relax, knowing that my lover will do me no ill. I feel secure in her presence. I may face many uncertainties in my vocation. I may have enemies in other areas of my life, but with my spouse I feel secure. ~ Gary Chapman

The global village is a place of very arduous interfaces and very abrasive situations. ~ Marshall McLuhan

When your tests depend on interfaces you can refactor the underlying code with reckless abandon. ~ Anonymous

User interface is customer service for the computer. ~ Julie Larson-Green

Intelligent assistance involves leveraging artificial intelligence to enable the government, individual companies, and the nonprofit social sector to develop more sophisticated online and mobile platforms that can empower every worker to engage in lifelong learning on their own time, and to have their learning recognized and rewarded with advancement. Intelligent assistants arise when we use artificial intelligence to improve the interfaces between humans and their tools with software, so humans can not only learn faster but also act faster and act smarter. Lastly, we need to deploy AI to create more intelligent algorithms, or what Reid Hoffman calls "human networks" - so that we can much more efficiently connect people to all the job opportunities that exist, all the skills needed for each job, and all the educational opportunities to acquire those skills cheaply and easily. ~ Thomas L. Friedman

Code is never neutral, and interfaces can signal all kinds of things to users. ~ Sarah Jeong

The best part is that you can use any number of different interfaces." Tap, tap, drag. "This one's made of Lego blocks, for younger kids. See how there's a Lego representation of the DNA? ~ Michael Grant

Disney and Apple/Microsoft are in the same business: short-circuiting laborious, explicit verbal communication with expensively designed interfaces. Disney is a sort of user interface unto itself - and more than just graphical. Let's call it a Sensorial Interface. It can be applied to anything in the world, real or imagined, albeit at staggering expense. ~ Neal Stephenson

Make interfaces programmatic rather than semantic when possible. Each interface consists of a programmatic part and a semantic part. The programmatic part consists of the data types and other attributes of the interface that can be enforced by the compiler. The semantic part of the interface consists of the assumptions about how the interface will be used, which cannot be enforced by the compiler. The semantic interface includes considerations such as "RoutineA must be called before RoutineB" or "RoutineA will crash if dataMember1 isn't initialized before it's passed to RoutineA." The semantic interface should be documented in comments, but try to keep interfaces minimally dependent on documentation. Any aspect of an interface that can't be enforced by the compiler is an aspect that's likely to be misused. Look for ways to convert semantic interface elements to programmatic interface elements by using Asserts or other techniques. ~ Steve McConnell

On the other hand, a system being developed by five different teams, each of which includes seven developers, cannot make progress unless the system is divided into well-defined components with reliably stable interfaces. If no other factors are considered, the architecture of that system will likely evolve into five components - one for each team. ~ Robert C. Martin

The user interface on the iPhone, with all due respect for what this invention was all about is now five years old. ~ Thorsten Heins

Brainstorm new interfaces that could introduce opportunities or threats to your business. ~ Nir Eyal

I don't want to use my creative energy on somebody else's user interface. ~ Jeff Bezos

Our lives look a lot more interesting when they're filtered through the sexy Facebook interface. We star in our own movies, we photograph ourselves incessantly, we click the mouse and a machine confirms our sense of mastery. ~ Jonathan Franzen

That strange new zone between medium and message. That zone we call the interface. ~ Steven Johnson

Once you've started a film you don't become a wet noodle. You must have that conflictual interface because you don't know, and they don't know. It's through conflict that you come out with something that might be different, better than either of you thought to begin with. ~ Jack Nicholson

I have a senior staff meeting every day, with key personnel who interface with the players - coaches, the medical staff, our analyst department. This is a useful exercise as it means we are all across what is happening and they are aware of my expectations. ~ Brendan Rodgers

Fungi are the interface organisms between life and death. ~ Paul Stamets

Complexity assertions have to be part of the interface ~ Alexander Stepanov

I'm interested in ways that digital interfaces can be utilized as powerful narrative devices, and to engage people in new and exciting ways. ~ Aaron Koblin

The clarity offered by software as metaphor - and the empowerment allegedly offered to us who know software - should make us pause, because software also engenders a sense of profound ignorance. Software is extremely difficult to comprehend. Who really knows what lurks behind our smiling interfaces, behind the objects we click and manipulate? Who completely understands what one's computer is actually doing at any given moment? Software as a metaphor for metaphor troubles the usual functioning of metaphor, that is, the clarification of an unknown concept through a known one. For, if software illuminates an unknown, it does so through an unknowable (software). This paradox - this drive to grasp what we do not know through what we do not entirely understand… does not undermine, but rather grounds software's appeal. Its combination of what can be seen and not seen, can be known and no known - it's separation of interface from algorithm, of software from hardware - makes it a powerful metaphor for everything we believe is invisible yet generates visible effects, from genetics to the invisible hand of the market, from ideology to culture. Every use entails an act of faith. ~ Wendy Hui Kyong Chun

If you ask me, the hypothetical zenith of gaming technology is direct neural interface - no body to hamper you and your brain is in whatever you want it to be in. Plus it leads to existential uncertainty, which could be entertaining. ~ Yahtzee Croshaw

The prime reason the Google homepage is so bare is due to the fact that the founders didn't know HTML and just wanted a quick interface. In fact, it was noted that the SUBMIT button was a long time coming and hitting the RETURN key was the only way to burst Google into life. ~ Marissa Mayer

Apple has a complex suite of proprietary technologies, both in hardware (like superior touchscreen materials) and software (like touchscreen interfaces purpose-designed for specific materials). ~ Peter Thiel

I am suggesting that we recognize that in network and interface research there is something as profound (and potential wild) as Artificial Intelligence. ~ Vernor Vinge

new interfaces are most understandable when they build on what users (and audiences) already know. ~ Nathan Shedroff

Living in a diverse world - or leading a diverse work force - is more than a mental construct, a memorized list of cultural differences, or a willingness to be tolerant. It's about examining how well we function at the margins and interfaces of life, where divergent ways of being and believing meet and collide. (Kemper ~ Mark E. Mendenhall

Even the best designers produce successful products only if their designs solve the right problems. A wonderful interface to the wrong features will fail. ~ Jakob Nielsen

I have discovered that there are two types of command interfaces in the world of computing: good interfaces and user interfaces. ~ Daniel J. Bernstein

Computers no longer interface with humans
they interact, and the interaction will become steadily deeper, more subtle, and more crucial to our collective sanity and ultimate survival. ~ Alan Cooper

One of the things I've been working on for the past few months is a radical simplification of the interface, ~ Matt Mullenweg

One of the problems with computers, particularly for the older people, is they were befuddled by them, and the computers have gotten better. They have gotten easier to use. They have gotten less expensive. The software interfaces have made things a lot more accessible. ~ Steve Case

The truth of Moore's law has made remarkable things possible. On the software side, I think natural user interfaces in all their forms are equally significant. ~ Bill Gates

The only intuitive interface is the nipple. Everything else is learned. ~ Bruce Tognazzini

Folk wisdom in software development teaches that interfaces shouldn't be unduly influenced by implementations. Writing a test first is a concrete way to achieve this separation. ~ Kent Beck

On the Native American front, we have turned a new page in the 400-year history of the interface between the American settlers of this country and the nation's first Americans. That's included a new relationship where the sovereignty of tribes is in fact recognized. ~ Ken Salazar

Things that we need to learn are the importance of establishing brand, establishing market presence. Technology-wise, it's things like ease of use, user interfaces; all of these things that tend to be less important in our other business segments are important things for us in the consumer market. ~ Charles Giancarlo

I think the major good idea in Unix was its clean and simple interface: open, close, read, and write. ~ Ken Thompson

Always think about how a piece of code should be used: good interfaces are the essence of good code. You can hide all kinds of clever and dirty code behind a good interface if you really need such code. ~ Bjarne Stroustrup

Ethics: The indispensable interface between my desire to be happy and yours. ~ Dalai Lama

The largest issue with search is that we learned about it when the web was young, when the universe was 'complete' - the entire web was searchable! Now our digital lives are utterly fractured - in apps, in walled gardens like Facebook, across clunky interfaces like those in automobiles or Comcast cable boxes. ~ John Battelle

First was the mouse. The second was the click wheel. And now, we're going to bring multi-touch to the market. And each of these revolutionary interfaces has made possible a revolutionary product - the Mac, the iPod and now the iPhone. ~ Steve Jobs

Interfaces called transparent allow us to interact/do what we're supposed to do without being aware of how the effects are obtained. We should perhaps speak instead about their opacity, given that we cannot see through them to the machine. ~ Stephanie Strickland

The approach to digital culture I abhor would indeed turn all the world's books into one book, just as Kevin (Kelly) suggested. It might start to happen in the next decade or so. Google and other companies are scanning library books into the cloud in a massive Manhattan Project of cultural digitization. What happens next is what's important. If the books in the cloud are accessed via user interfaces that encourage mashups of fragments that obscure the context and authorship of each fragment, there will be only one book. This is what happens today with a lot of content; often you don't know where a quoted fragment from a news story came from, who wrote a comment, or who shot a video. A continuation of the present trend will make us like various medieval religious empires, or like North Korea, a society with a single book.

The Bible can serve as a prototypical example. Like Wikipedia, the Bible's authorship was shared, largely anonymous, and cumulative, and the obscurity of the individual authors served to create an oracle-like ambience for the document as "the literal word of God." If we take a non-metaphysical view of the Bible, it serves as a link to our ancestors, a window. The ethereal, digital replacement technology for the printing press happens to have come of age in a time when the unfortunate ideology I'm criticizing dominates technological culture. Authorship - the very idea of the individual point of view - is not a priority of the new ideology. The digi ~ Jaron Lanier

An ugly system is one in which there are special interfaces for everything you want to do. Unix is the opposite. It gives you the building blocks that are sufficient for doing everything. That's what having a clean design is all about. ~ Linus Torvalds

You might not think of something like TurboTax as a civic venture, but that product took a confusing interface to a government process and made it simpler and easier to use for citizens. ~ Jennifer Pahlka

To the user, the interface is the product. ~ Aza Raskin

Like any place in Reality, the Street is subject to development. Developers can
build their own small streets feeding off of the main one. They can build
buildings, parks, signs, as well as things that do not exist in Reality, such as
vast hovering overhead light shows, special neighborhoods where the rules of
three-dimensional spacetime are ignored, and free-combat zones where people can
go to hunt and kill each other.
The only difference is that since the Street does not really exist -- it's just
a computer-graphics protocol written down on a piece of paper somewhere -- none
of these things is being physically built. They are, rather, pieces of
software, made available to the public over the worldwide fiber-optics network.
When Hiro goes into the Metaverse and looks down the Street and sees buildings
and electric signs stretching off into the darkness, disappearing over the curve
of the globe, he is actually staring at the graphic representations -- the user
interfaces -- of a myriad different pieces of software that have been engineered
by major corporations. In order to place these things on the Street, they have
had to get approval from the Global Multimedia Protocol Group, have had to buy
frontage on the Street, get zoning approval, obtain permits, bribe inspectors,
the whole bit. The money these corporations pay to build things on the Street
all goes into a trust fund owned and op ~ Neal Stephenson

You know what I'd really, really like? What I'd pay MONEY for? A ZX81 with a disc drive. I understood the ZX81. It was so easy to interface stuff to it. ~ Terry Pratchett

The best way to learn the value of good interface design is to use lots of interfaces - some good, some bad. Experience will teach you what works and what doesn't. Never assume that a painful interface is "just the way it is." Fix it, or wrap it in ~ Marijn Haverbeke

Beauty is more important in computing than anywhere else in technology because software is so complicated. Beauty is the ultimate defense against complexity ... The geniuses of the computer field, on the the other hand, are the people with the keenest aesthetic senses, the ones who are capable of creating beauty. Beauty is decisive at every level: the most important interfaces, the most important programming languages, the winning algorithms are the beautiful ones. ~ David Gelernter

I get so much from having the opportunity to interface with the younger people and to bring information to them and to represent our culture and our way of life. The feeling and the warmth and the love, it's unbelievable. The type of exchange that goes on between students and teachers or visiting people who are doing master classes, and not just when they're musicians. Even general classes, when the students are not necessarily musicians. ~ Wynton Marsalis

Run for your lives-the computers are invading. Awesomely powerful computers tackling ever more important tasks with awkward, old-fashioned interfaces. As these machines leak into every corner of our lives, they will annoy us, infuriate us, and even kill a few of us. In turn, we will be tempted to kill our computers, but we won't dare because we are already utterly, irreversibly dependent on these hopeful monsters that make modern life possible. ~ Alan Cooper