It is not so much the computer manufacturers, that want to do as if they sell an easy product; it is not so much the managers of software projects, that would like to view the programming activity as a simple and predictable one; it is not so much our educational institutes, that would like to train their students with predictable success.

It is the comfortable illusion of Man as elaborate automata that, like a drug, seems to have freed its victims from the burden of responsibility. Accepting programming as a hard intellectual challenge would place the full weight of that burden back upon their shoulders.