Are more sure when you can write, even more when you can teach, but certain when you can program.
ALAN PERLISIf your computer speaks English, it was probably made in Japan.
More Alan Perlis Quotes
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In man-machine symbiosis, it is man who must adjust: The machines can’t.
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Don’t have good ideas if you aren’t willing to be responsible for them.
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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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You’ve solved the wrong problem. Work hard to improve.
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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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You can measure a programmer’s perspective by noting his attitude on the continuing vitality of FORTRAN.
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Motto for a research laboratory: what we work on today, others will first think of tomorrow.
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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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Some programming languages manage to absorb change, but withstand progress.
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In English every word can be verbed.
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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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I think that it’s extraordinarily important that we in computer science keep fun in computing.
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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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Programmers are not to be measured by their ingenuity and their logic but by the completeness of their case analysis.
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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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I think it is inevitable that people program poorly.
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I hope the field of computer science never loses its sense of fun.
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In software systems it is often the early bird that makes the worm.
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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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Optimization hinders evolution.
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One man’s constant is another man’s variable.
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Hardly any sets of 10K words can be adequately described with pictures.
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Dealing with failure is easy.
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We are on the verge: Today our program proved Fermat’s next-to-last theorem.
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Everything should be built top-down, except the first time.
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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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