Some programming languages manage to absorb change, but withstand progress.
ALAN PERLISAre more sure when you can write, even more when you can teach, but certain when you can program.
More Alan Perlis Quotes
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We are on the verge: Today our program proved Fermat’s next-to-last theorem.
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If a listener nods his head when you’re explaining your program, wake him up.
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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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C programmers never die. They are just cast into void.
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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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Don’t have good ideas if you aren’t willing to be responsible for them.
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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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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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If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some.
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Once you understand how to write a program get someone else to write it.
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If your computer speaks English, it was probably made in Japan.
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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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Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.
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Learning French is trivial: the word for horse is cheval, and everything else follows in the same way.
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One man’s constant is another man’s variable.
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In software systems it is often the early bird that makes the worm.
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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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Because of its vitality, the computing field is always in desperate need of new cliches.
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In the long run, every program becomes rococo, and then rubble.
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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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A language that doesn’t affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
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I think it is inevitable that people program poorly.
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Optimization hinders evolution.
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There is no such thing as a free variable.
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Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.
ALAN PERLIS