You can measure a programmer’s perspective by noting his attitude on the continuing vitality of FORTRAN.
ALAN PERLISSome programming languages manage to absorb change, but withstand progress.
More Alan Perlis Quotes
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One can’t proceed from the informal to the formal by formal means.
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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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You’ve solved the wrong problem. Work hard to improve.
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Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.
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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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In English every word can be verbed. Would that it were so in our programming languages.
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In man-machine symbiosis, it is man who must adjust: The machines can’t.
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A picture is worth 10K words – but only those to describe the picture.
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Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.
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C programmers never die. They are just cast into void.
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If your computer speaks English, it was probably made in Japan.
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Optimization hinders evolution.
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Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon.
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Dealing with failure is easy.
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Programmers are not to be measured by their ingenuity and their logic but by the completeness of their case analysis.
ALAN PERLIS