You can measure a programmer’s perspective by noting his attitude on the continuing vitality of FORTRAN.
ALAN PERLISOne man’s constant is another man’s variable.
More Alan Perlis Quotes
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Optimization hinders evolution.
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Work hard to improve. Success is also easy to handle.
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You think you KNOW when you learn.
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If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some.
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One can only display complex information in the mind.
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A LISP programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of nothing.
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Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.
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Hardly any sets of 10K words can be adequately described with pictures.
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In computing, the mean time to failure keeps getting shorter.
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Programmers are not to be measured by their ingenuity and their logic but by the completeness of their case analysis.
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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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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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We toast the Lisp programmer who pens his thoughts within nests of parentheses.
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To understand a program, you must become both the machine and the program.
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Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.
ALAN PERLIS






