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.
ALAN PERLISYou think you KNOW when you learn.
More Alan Perlis Quotes
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Hardly any sets of 10K words can be adequately described with pictures.
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Motto for a research laboratory: what we work on today, others will first think of tomorrow.
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There are two ways to write error-free programs; only the third one works.
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We are on the verge: Today our program proved Fermat’s next-to-last theorem.
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One can only display complex information in the mind.
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Dealing with failure is easy.
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Computer Science is embarrassed by the computer.
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FORTRAN is not a flower but a weed – it is hardy, occasionally blooms, and grows in every computer.
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Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.
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I think that it’s extraordinarily important that we in computer science keep fun in computing.
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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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A programming language is low level when its programs require attention to the irrelevant.
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C programmers never die. They are just cast into void.
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Work hard to improve. Success is also easy to handle.
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A LISP programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of nothing.
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Once you understand how to write a program get someone else to write it.
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In software systems it is often the early bird that makes the worm.
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It is better to have 100 functions operate on one data structure than to have 10 functions operate on 10 data structures.
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If your computer speaks English, it was probably made in Japan.
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In the long run, every program becomes rococo, and then rubble.
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Everything should be built top-down, except the first time.
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One can’t proceed from the informal to the formal by formal means.
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Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.
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Optimization hinders evolution.
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If a listener nods his head when you’re explaining your program, wake him up.
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A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
ALAN PERLIS