It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice versa.
ALAN PERLISAdapting old programs to fit new machines usually means adapting new machines to behave like old ones.
More Alan Perlis Quotes
-
-
In computing, turning the obvious into the useful is a living definition of the word “frustration”.
ALAN PERLIS -
One can’t proceed from the informal to the formal by formal means.
ALAN PERLIS -
One man’s constant is another man’s variable.
ALAN PERLIS -
Optimization hinders evolution.
ALAN PERLIS -
Every reader should ask himself periodically.
ALAN PERLIS -
Often it is the means that justify the ends: goals advance technique and technique survives even when goal structures crumble.
ALAN PERLIS -
Are more sure when you can write, even more when you can teach, but certain when you can program.
ALAN PERLIS -
Is it possible that software is not like anything else.
ALAN PERLIS -
“Toward what end, toward what end?”-but do not ask it too often lest you pass up the fun of programming for the constipation of bittersweet philosophy.
ALAN PERLIS -
There is no such thing as a free variable.
ALAN PERLIS -
Motto for a research laboratory: what we work on today, others will first think of tomorrow.
ALAN PERLIS -
In programming, as in everything else, to be in error is to be reborn.
ALAN PERLIS -
When a professor insists computer science is X but not Y, have compassion for his graduate students.
ALAN PERLIS -
In software systems it is often the early bird that makes the worm.
ALAN PERLIS -
Adapting old programs to fit new machines usually means adapting new machines to behave like old ones.
ALAN PERLIS