Training will not substantially help matters. We have to learn to live with it.
ALAN PERLISThere is no such thing as a free variable.
More Alan Perlis Quotes
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A picture is worth 10K words – but only those to describe the picture.
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When a professor insists computer science is X but not Y, have compassion for his graduate students.
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Once you understand how to write a program get someone else to write it.
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A LISP programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of nothing.
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Don’t have good ideas if you aren’t willing to be responsible for them.
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In software systems it is often the early bird that makes the worm.
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Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.
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One can’t proceed from the informal to the formal by formal means.
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You think you KNOW when you learn.
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Any noun can be verbed.
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In man-machine symbiosis, it is man who must adjust: The machines can’t.
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One can only display complex information in the mind.
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It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice versa.
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Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.
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A good programming language is a conceptual universe for thinking about programming.
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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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I think that it’s extraordinarily important that we in computer science keep fun in computing.
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Because of its vitality, the computing field is always in desperate need of new cliches.
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Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.
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Is it possible that software is not like anything else.
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In computing, turning the obvious into the useful is a living definition of the word “frustration”.
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In English every word can be verbed.
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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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FORTRAN is not a flower but a weed – it is hardy, occasionally blooms, and grows in every computer.
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Optimization hinders evolution.
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Some programming languages manage to absorb change, but withstand progress.
ALAN PERLIS