A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
ALAN PERLISLike seeing, movement or flow or alteration of view is more important than the static picture, no matter how lovely.
More Alan Perlis Quotes
-
-
It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice versa.
ALAN PERLIS -
If your computer speaks English, it was probably made in Japan.
ALAN PERLIS -
When a professor insists computer science is X but not Y, have compassion for his graduate students.
ALAN PERLIS -
Are more sure when you can write, even more when you can teach, but certain when you can program.
ALAN PERLIS -
Hardly any sets of 10K words can be adequately described with pictures.
ALAN PERLIS -
Adapting old programs to fit new machines usually means adapting new machines to behave like old ones.
ALAN PERLIS -
In computing, turning the obvious into the useful is a living definition of the word “frustration”.
ALAN PERLIS -
FORTRAN is not a flower but a weed – it is hardy, occasionally blooms, and grows in every computer.
ALAN PERLIS -
Often it is the means that justify the ends: goals advance technique and technique survives even when goal structures crumble.
ALAN PERLIS -
Motto for a research laboratory: what we work on today, others will first think of tomorrow.
ALAN PERLIS -
There are two ways to write error-free programs; only the third one works.
ALAN PERLIS -
You think you KNOW when you learn.
ALAN PERLIS -
One can’t proceed from the informal to the formal by formal means.
ALAN PERLIS -
Training will not substantially help matters. We have to learn to live with it.
ALAN PERLIS -
“Toward what end, toward what end?”-but do not ask it too often lest you pass up the fun of programming for the constipation of bittersweet philosophy.
ALAN PERLIS -
Like seeing, movement or flow or alteration of view is more important than the static picture, no matter how lovely.
ALAN PERLIS -
Once you understand how to write a program get someone else to write it.
ALAN PERLIS -
We began to feel as if we really were responsible for the successful, error-free perfect use of these machines.
ALAN PERLIS -
It goes against the grain of modern education to teach children to program.
ALAN PERLIS -
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.
ALAN PERLIS -
You’ve solved the wrong problem. Work hard to improve.
ALAN PERLIS -
Banality soothes our nerves.
ALAN PERLIS -
We toast the Lisp programmer who pens his thoughts within nests of parentheses.
ALAN PERLIS -
In English every word can be verbed. Would that it were so in our programming languages.
ALAN PERLIS -
Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.
ALAN PERLIS -
A good programming language is a conceptual universe for thinking about programming.
ALAN PERLIS