Often it is the means that justify the ends: goals advance technique and technique survives even when goal structures crumble.
ALAN PERLISWhen someone says, “I want a programming language in which I need only say what I want done,” give him a lollipop.
More Alan Perlis Quotes
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Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.
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In English every word can be verbed.
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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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Training will not substantially help matters. We have to learn to live with 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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To understand a program, you must become both the machine and the program.
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Every reader should ask himself periodically.
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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 computing, turning the obvious into the useful is a living definition of the word “frustration”.
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There is no such thing as a free variable.
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Is it possible that software is not like anything else.
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One man’s constant is another man’s variable.
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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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A good programming language is a conceptual universe for thinking about programming.
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One can only display complex information in the mind.
ALAN PERLIS