Learning French is trivial: the word for horse is cheval, and everything else follows in the same way.
ALAN PERLISWe began to feel as if we really were responsible for the successful, error-free perfect use of these machines.
More Alan Perlis Quotes
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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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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.
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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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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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What fun is there in making plans, acquiring discipline in organizing thoughts, devoting attention to detail and learning to be self-critical?
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A LISP programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of nothing.
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Banality soothes our nerves.
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If your computer speaks English, it was probably made in Japan.
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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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Some programming languages manage to absorb change, but withstand progress.
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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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Adapting old programs to fit new machines usually means adapting new machines to behave like old ones.
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Computer Science is embarrassed by the computer.
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In computing, turning the obvious into the useful is a living definition of the word “frustration”.
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I don’t think we are. I think we’re responsible for stretching them, setting them off in new directions, and keeping fun in the house.
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Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.
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Like seeing, movement or flow or alteration of view is more important than the static picture, no matter how lovely.
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There are two ways to write error-free programs; only the third one works.
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We toast the Lisp programmer who pens his thoughts within nests of parentheses.
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In computing, the mean time to failure keeps getting shorter.
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You think you KNOW when you learn.
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In programming, as in everything else, to be in error is to be reborn.
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Dealing with failure is easy.
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If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some.
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We are on the verge: Today our program proved Fermat’s next-to-last theorem.
ALAN PERLIS