Quotes by Bill Joy

About Bill Joy:

William Nelson "Bill" Joy is an American computer scientist. Joy co-founded Sun Microsystems in 1982 along with Vinod Khosla, Scott McNealy and Andreas von Bechtolsheim, and served as chief scientist at the company until 2003. He played an integral role in the early development of BSD UNIX while a graduate student at Berkeley, and he is the original author of the vi text editor. He also wrote the 2000 essay "Why the Future Doesn't Need Us", in which he expressed deep concerns over the development of modern technologies.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Well, limbo is not a good place to be.

Bill Joy

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

Bill Joy

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.

Bill Joy

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

Bill Joy

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

Bill Joy

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

Bill Joy

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

Bill Joy

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.

Bill Joy

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

Bill Joy

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

Bill Joy

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

Bill Joy

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

Bill Joy

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

Bill Joy

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

Bill Joy

Interleaf is based on the formatting process.

Bill Joy

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

Bill Joy

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

Bill Joy

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

Bill Joy

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.

Bill Joy

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

Bill Joy

Author Bio

  • NameBill Joy
  • DescriptionAmerican computer scientist
  • BornNovember 8, 1954
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionComputer Scientist; Engineer; Programmer
  • AwardsGrace Murray Hopper Award