When a professor insists computer science is X but not Y, have compassion for his graduate students.
ALAN PERLISIf your computer speaks English, it was probably made in Japan.
More Alan Perlis Quotes
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Everything should be built top-down, except the first time.
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Work hard to improve. Success is also easy to handle.
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Computer Science is embarrassed by the computer.
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Every reader should ask himself periodically.
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In man-machine symbiosis, it is man who must adjust: The machines can’t.
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C programmers never die. They are just cast into void.
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I hope the field of computer science never loses its sense of fun.
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If a listener nods his head when you’re explaining your program, wake him up.
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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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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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Because of its vitality, the computing field is always in desperate need of new cliches.
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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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To understand a program, you must become both the machine and the program.
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Optimization hinders evolution.
ALAN PERLIS