What is design? It's where you stand with a foot in two worlds - the world of technology and the world of people and human purposes - and you try to bring the two together.
America glories in its tradition of the self-made individual. Political candidates compete to be a friend to entrepreneurs, and policymakers, imagining the next Microsoft or Google, design laws to back the innovator in the garage.
I was really just a hard-core geek, if you will, in 1996, and was building websites as a hobby. I started doing a lot of web design and development and built my first website on the now-defunct GeoCities platform.
When I arrived at Harvard, I wanted to design a course in political theory that would have interested me, back when I was started out, in a way that the standard things didn't.
I brought a lot of my own pieces of clothes to the design room when I first met with the design team just so they could see what my style was like.
Everyone by now presumably knows about the danger of premature optimization. I think we should be just as worried about premature design - designing too early what a program should do.
I wear a lot of different hats - from writer to producer and artist. We all do 5 or 6 jobs, everything from creating our own graphic design to actually recording and the whole bit.
Design certainly has a cosmetic, aesthetic aim. It always aims at making things beautiful. But relevance is just as important. I often say, 'If it isn't ethical, it can't be beautiful. But if it isn't beautiful, it probably shouldn't be at all.'
Actually, I didn't make the claim that Ruby follows the principle of least surprise. Someone felt the design of Ruby follows that philosophy, so they started saying that. I didn't bring that up, actually.
It goes against the grain of modern education to teach students to program. What fun is there to making plans, acquiring discipline, organizing thoughts, devoting attention to detail, and learning to be self critical.
The American people frankly have been, over many, many years - to be blunt - fat, dumb and happy. If they want their children to compete with children in India, China or Korea, they better get them a far better education.
I think if you have to pay for your education, you worry very seriously about you're going to do when you've got your degree.
By making all my materials freely available through 'Giving 2.0' ProjectU, I am on a mission to extend philanthropy education to colleges globally and far beyond campus walls.
I was born in 1940 in Hathazari, Chittagong, which is now part of Bangladesh. Education was always important to my parents, and with what little we had, they were able to provide an education for their children.
I want to fix education in the world. As soon as I work on that, I am going to work on world hunger and then world peace.
Under these conditions it is not astonishing that learning was highly prized; in fact, my parents made sacrifices to be able to give their children a good education.
Our world faces a true planetary emergency. I know the phrase sounds shrill, and I know it's a challenge to the moral imagination.
I don't know anything about propaganda for Chinese reunification. I only know about charity and environmental work. I just want to do good.
Ted Turner is still a leader. And he sets a great example. His ability financially has been reduced, but his influence and his example still is an important asset to the whole environmental movement.
My mom is great and I make sure that we pray together before every race. She helps me put everything in perspective and remind me of the real reason I run.
I knew the Apple II was great when I bought it, but as I dug into the details it just completely blew me away the creative artistic approach that the designers had taken.
