Alan Perlis on every program
Alan Perlis73 quotes“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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More from Alan Perlis
That it is meant to be discarded: that the whole point is to always see it as a soap bubble?
Alan PerlisAlan Perlis Any noun can be verbed.
Alan PerlisAlan Perlis Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon.
Alan PerlisAlan Perlis We are on the verge: Today our program proved Fermat’s next-to-last theorem.
Alan PerlisAlan Perlis In the long run, every program becomes rococo, and then rubble.
Alan PerlisAlan 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 PerlisAlan Perlis Often it is the means that justify the ends: goals advance technique and technique survives even when goal structures crumble.
Alan PerlisAlan Perlis A language that doesn’t affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
Alan PerlisAlan Perlis Once you understand how to write a program get someone else to write it.
Alan PerlisAlan Perlis We toast the Lisp programmer who pens his thoughts within nests of parentheses.
Alan PerlisAlan Perlis I think it is inevitable that people program poorly.
Alan PerlisAlan Perlis You think you KNOW when you learn.
Alan PerlisAlan Perlis Adapting old programs to fit new machines usually means adapting new machines to behave like old ones.
Alan PerlisAlan Perlis Are more sure when you can write, even more when you can teach, but certain when you can program.
Alan PerlisAlan Perlis A LISP programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of nothing.
Alan PerlisAlan Perlis Computer Science is embarrassed by the computer.
Alan PerlisAlan Perlis
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