What fun is there in making plans, acquiring discipline in organizing thoughts, devoting attention to detail and learning to be self-critical?
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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A good programming language is a conceptual universe for thinking about programming.
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A LISP programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of nothing.
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In computing, turning the obvious into the useful is a living definition of the word “frustration”.
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Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon.
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In man-machine symbiosis, it is man who must adjust: The machines can’t.
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Once you understand how to write a program get someone else to write it.
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Any noun can be verbed.
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A picture is worth 10K words – but only those to describe the picture.
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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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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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Because of its vitality, the computing field is always in desperate need of new cliches.
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To understand a program, you must become both the machine and the program.
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One man’s constant is another man’s variable.
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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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Don’t have good ideas if you aren’t willing to be responsible for them.
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Are more sure when you can write, even more when you can teach, but certain when you can program.
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Often it is the means that justify the ends: goals advance technique and technique survives even when goal structures crumble.
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That it is meant to be discarded: that the whole point is to always see it as a soap bubble?
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If a listener nods his head when you’re explaining your program, wake him up.
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Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.
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Is it possible that software is not like anything else.
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A language that doesn’t affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
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Some programming languages manage to absorb change, but withstand progress.
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If your computer speaks English, it was probably made in Japan.
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In software systems it is often the early bird that makes the worm.
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We toast the Lisp programmer who pens his thoughts within nests of parentheses.
ALAN PERLIS