A programming language is low level when its programs require attention to the irrelevant.
ALAN PERLISIt is better to have 100 functions operate on one data structure than to have 10 functions operate on 10 data structures.
More Alan Perlis Quotes
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Don’t have good ideas if you aren’t willing to be responsible for them.
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In English every word can be verbed. Would that it were so in our programming languages.
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You think you KNOW when you learn.
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In computing, turning the obvious into the useful is a living definition of the word “frustration”.
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We toast the Lisp programmer who pens his thoughts within nests of parentheses.
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Every reader should ask himself periodically.
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Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.
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You can measure a programmer’s perspective by noting his attitude on the continuing vitality of FORTRAN.
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I think that it’s extraordinarily important that we in computer science keep fun in computing.
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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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One can’t proceed from the informal to the formal by formal means.
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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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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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One man’s constant is another man’s variable.
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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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