“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.
ALAN PERLISI think that it’s extraordinarily important that we in computer science keep fun in computing.
More Alan Perlis Quotes
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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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I hope the field of computer science never loses its sense of fun.
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In English every word can be verbed. Would that it were so in our programming languages.
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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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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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We toast the Lisp programmer who pens his thoughts within nests of parentheses.
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You’ve solved the wrong problem. Work hard to improve.
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Optimization hinders evolution.
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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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Dealing with failure is easy.
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There are two ways to write error-free programs; only the third one works.
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You think you KNOW when you learn.
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One can’t proceed from the informal to the formal by formal means.
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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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To understand a program, you must become both the machine and the program.
ALAN PERLIS