I hope the field of computer science never loses its sense of fun.
ALAN PERLISYou’ve solved the wrong problem. Work hard to improve.
More Alan Perlis Quotes
-
-
One can only display complex information in the mind.
ALAN PERLIS -
One can’t proceed from the informal to the formal by formal means.
ALAN PERLIS -
Often it is the means that justify the ends: goals advance technique and technique survives even when goal structures crumble.
ALAN PERLIS -
Is it possible that software is not like anything else.
ALAN PERLIS -
Once you understand how to write a program get someone else to write it.
ALAN PERLIS -
Optimization hinders evolution.
ALAN PERLIS -
When someone says, “I want a programming language in which I need only say what I want done,” give him a lollipop.
ALAN PERLIS -
Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.
ALAN PERLIS -
I think that it’s extraordinarily important that we in computer science keep fun in computing.
ALAN PERLIS -
Some programming languages manage to absorb change, but withstand progress.
ALAN PERLIS -
There is no such thing as a free variable.
ALAN PERLIS -
If your computer speaks English, it was probably made in Japan.
ALAN PERLIS -
“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 PERLIS -
Because of its vitality, the computing field is always in desperate need of new cliches.
ALAN PERLIS -
You’ve solved the wrong problem. Work hard to improve.
ALAN PERLIS -
In computing, the mean time to failure keeps getting shorter.
ALAN PERLIS -
A LISP programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of nothing.
ALAN PERLIS -
We toast the Lisp programmer who pens his thoughts within nests of parentheses.
ALAN PERLIS -
Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.
ALAN PERLIS -
A good programming language is a conceptual universe for thinking about programming.
ALAN PERLIS -
A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
ALAN PERLIS -
Programmers are not to be measured by their ingenuity and their logic but by the completeness of their case analysis.
ALAN PERLIS -
When a professor insists computer science is X but not Y, have compassion for his graduate students.
ALAN PERLIS -
When it started out, it was an awful lot of fun. Of course, the paying customers got shafted every now and then, and after a while we began to take their complaints seriously.
ALAN PERLIS -
Every program has (at least) two purposes: the one for which it was written and another for which it wasn’t.
ALAN PERLIS -
In English every word can be verbed.
ALAN PERLIS