Every program has (at least) two purposes: the one for which it was written and another for which it wasn’t.
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
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A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
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In English every word can be verbed. Would that it were so in our programming languages.
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A good programming language is a conceptual universe for thinking about programming.
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We are on the verge: Today our program proved Fermat’s next-to-last theorem.
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Training will not substantially help matters. We have to learn to live with it.
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If your computer speaks English, it was probably made in Japan.
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“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.
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In man-machine symbiosis, it is man who must adjust: The machines can’t.
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In the long run, every program becomes rococo, and then rubble.
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Like seeing, movement or flow or alteration of view is more important than the static picture, no matter how lovely.
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Work hard to improve. Success is also easy to handle.
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Hardly any sets of 10K words can be adequately described with pictures.
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Don’t have good ideas if you aren’t willing to be responsible for them.
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You can measure a programmer’s perspective by noting his attitude on the continuing vitality of FORTRAN.
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One man’s constant is another man’s variable.
ALAN PERLIS






