Any noun can be verbed.
ALAN PERLISAdapting old programs to fit new machines usually means adapting new machines to behave like old ones.
More Alan Perlis Quotes
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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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When a professor insists computer science is X but not Y, have compassion for his graduate students.
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Banality soothes our nerves.
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You’ve solved the wrong problem. Work hard to improve.
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There is no such thing as a free variable.
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In software systems it is often the early bird that makes the worm.
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It is better to have 100 functions operate on one data structure than to have 10 functions operate on 10 data structures.
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I hope the field of computer science never loses its sense of fun.
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Learning French is trivial: the word for horse is cheval, and everything else follows in the same way.
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There are two ways to write error-free programs; only the third one works.
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Optimization hinders evolution.
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I think that it’s extraordinarily important that we in computer science keep fun in computing.
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It goes against the grain of modern education to teach children to program.
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Dealing with failure is easy.
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One man’s constant is another man’s variable.
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In the long run, every program becomes rococo, and then rubble.
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We are on the verge: Today our program proved Fermat’s next-to-last theorem.
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One can only display complex information in the mind.
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A good programming language is a conceptual universe for thinking about programming.
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We toast the Lisp programmer who pens his thoughts within nests of parentheses.
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Every reader should ask himself periodically.
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If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some.
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Because of its vitality, the computing field is always in desperate need of new cliches.
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Hardly any sets of 10K words can be adequately described with pictures.
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Often it is the means that justify the ends: goals advance technique and technique survives even when goal structures crumble.
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Are more sure when you can write, even more when you can teach, but certain when you can program.
ALAN PERLIS