Any noun can be verbed.
ALAN PERLISWhen 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.
More Alan Perlis Quotes
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Because of its vitality, the computing field is always in desperate need of new cliches.
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You can measure a programmer’s perspective by noting his attitude on the continuing vitality of FORTRAN.
ALAN PERLIS -
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 -
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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A language that doesn’t affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
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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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A programming language is low level when its programs require attention to the irrelevant.
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In man-machine symbiosis, it is man who must adjust: The machines can’t.
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You think you KNOW when you learn.
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In software systems it is often the early bird that makes the worm.
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I think that it’s extraordinarily important that we in computer science keep fun in computing.
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When someone says, “I want a programming language in which I need only say what I want done,” give him a lollipop.
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One can’t proceed from the informal to the formal by formal means.
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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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Are more sure when you can write, even more when you can teach, but certain when you can program.
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Hardly any sets of 10K words can be adequately described with pictures.
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Every reader should ask himself periodically.
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Don’t have good ideas if you aren’t willing to be responsible for them.
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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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Dealing with failure is easy.
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In computing, turning the obvious into the useful is a living definition of the word “frustration”.
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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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There is no such thing as a free variable.
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A LISP programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of nothing.
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Optimization hinders evolution.
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We began to feel as if we really were responsible for the successful, error-free perfect use of these machines.
ALAN PERLIS