Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible.

The protean nature of the computer is such that it can act like a machine or like a language to be shaped and exploited.

I think that it’s extraordinarily important that we in computer science keep fun in computing. When it started out it was an awful lot of fun. Of course the paying customers got shafted every now and then and after a while we began to take their complaints seriously. We began to feel as if we really were responsible for the successful error-free perfect use of these machines. I don’t think we are. I think we’re responsible for stretching them setting them off in new directions and keeping fun in the house. I hope the field of computer science never loses its sense of fun. Above all I hope we don’t become missionaries. Don’t feel as if you’re Bible sales-men. The world has too many of those already. What you know about computing other people will learn. Don’t feel as if the key to successful computing is only in your hands. What’s in your hands I think and hope is intelligence: the ability to see the machine as more than when you were first led up to it that you can make it more.

Is it possible that software is not like anything else, that it is meant
to be discarded: that the whole point is to always see it as a soap
bubble?

What's in your hands I think and hope is intelligence: the ability to see the machine as more than when you were first led up to it that you can make it more.

If you are too lazy to cleanup your database after testing, your filesystem after testing or your memory based system consider moving to a different profession. This isn't a job for you.