In man-machine symbiosis, it is man who must adjust: The machines can’t.
ALAN PERLISIf your computer speaks English, it was probably made in Japan.
More Alan Perlis Quotes
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Any noun can be verbed.
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To understand a program, you must become both the machine and the program.
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I hope the field of computer science never loses its sense of fun.
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Every reader should ask himself periodically.
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C programmers never die. They are just cast into void.
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It goes against the grain of modern education to teach children to program.
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Dealing with failure is easy.
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You think you KNOW when you learn.
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In computing, turning the obvious into the useful is a living definition of the word “frustration”.
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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 began to feel as if we really were responsible for the successful, error-free perfect use of these machines.
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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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“Toward what end, toward what end?”-but do not ask it too often lest you pass up the fun of programming for the constipation of bittersweet philosophy.
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We toast the Lisp programmer who pens his thoughts within nests of parentheses.
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Because of its vitality, the computing field is always in desperate need of new cliches.
ALAN PERLIS