Programmers are not to be measured by their ingenuity and their logic but by the completeness of their case analysis.
ALAN PERLISIf you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some.
More Alan Perlis Quotes
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Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.
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Motto for a research laboratory: what we work on today, others will first think of tomorrow.
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Every reader should ask himself periodically.
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Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.
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Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon.
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A programming language is low level when its programs require attention to the irrelevant.
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If a listener nods his head when you’re explaining your program, wake him up.
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I think that it’s extraordinarily important that we in computer science keep fun in computing.
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Banality soothes our nerves.
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The best book on programming for the layman is Alice in Wonderland, but that’s because it’s the best book on anything for the layman.
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In programming, as in everything else, to be in error is to be reborn.
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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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FORTRAN is not a flower but a weed – it is hardy, occasionally blooms, and grows in every computer.
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Everything should be built top-down, except the first time.
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Every program has (at least) two purposes: the one for which it was written and another for which it wasn’t.
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A good programming language is a conceptual universe for thinking about programming.
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Hardly any sets of 10K words can be adequately described with pictures.
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We began to feel as if we really were responsible for the successful, error-free perfect use of these machines.
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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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Because of its vitality, the computing field is always in desperate need of new cliches.
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There is no such thing as a free variable.
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That it is meant to be discarded: that the whole point is to always see it as a soap bubble?
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Are more sure when you can write, even more when you can teach, but certain when you can program.
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Some programming languages manage to absorb change, but withstand progress.
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When a professor insists computer science is X but not Y, have compassion for his graduate students.
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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.
ALAN PERLIS