We are on the verge: Today our program proved Fermat’s next-to-last theorem.
ALAN PERLISMotto for a research laboratory: what we work on today, others will first think of tomorrow.
More Alan Perlis Quotes
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One can’t proceed from the informal to the formal by formal means.
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A LISP programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of nothing.
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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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If your computer speaks English, it was probably made in Japan.
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One can only display complex information in the mind.
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Motto for a research laboratory: what we work on today, others will first think of tomorrow.
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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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Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.
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In computing, the mean time to failure keeps getting shorter.
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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 it is inevitable that people program poorly.
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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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Because of its vitality, the computing field is always in desperate need of new cliches.
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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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In the long run, every program becomes rococo, and then rubble.
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If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some.
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Hardly any sets of 10K words can be adequately described with pictures.
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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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Optimization hinders evolution.
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Is it possible that software is not like anything else.
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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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You’ve solved the wrong problem. Work hard to improve.
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It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice versa.
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Programmers are not to be measured by their ingenuity and their logic but by the completeness of their case analysis.
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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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One man’s constant is another man’s variable.
ALAN PERLIS