It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice versa.
ALAN PERLISOnce you understand how to write a program get someone else to write it.
More Alan Perlis Quotes
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We are on the verge: Today our program proved Fermat’s next-to-last theorem.
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A language that doesn’t affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
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Don’t have good ideas if you aren’t willing to be responsible for them.
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Adapting old programs to fit new machines usually means adapting new machines to behave like old ones.
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Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon.
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A LISP programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of nothing.
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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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If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some.
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What fun is there in making plans, acquiring discipline in organizing thoughts, devoting attention to detail and learning to be self-critical?
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Work hard to improve. Success is also easy to handle.
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Dealing with failure is easy.
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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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We toast the Lisp programmer who pens his thoughts within nests of parentheses.
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In computing, the mean time to failure keeps getting shorter.
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Any noun can be verbed.
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One can only display complex information in the mind.
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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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Is it possible that software is not like anything else.
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I think it is inevitable that people program poorly.
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In computing, turning the obvious into the useful is a living definition of the word “frustration”.
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There are two ways to write error-free programs; only the third one works.
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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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Every reader should ask himself periodically.
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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.
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You’ve solved the wrong problem. Work hard to improve.
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A picture is worth 10K words – but only those to describe the picture.
ALAN PERLIS