When someone says, “I want a programming language in which I need only say what I want done,” give him a lollipop.
ALAN PERLISA language that doesn’t affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
More Alan Perlis Quotes
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One man’s constant is another man’s variable.
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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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In software systems it is often the early bird that makes the worm.
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Motto for a research laboratory: what we work on today, others will first think of tomorrow.
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It goes against the grain of modern education to teach children to program.
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Hardly any sets of 10K words can be adequately described with pictures.
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A programming language is low level when its programs require attention to the irrelevant.
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In English every word can be verbed. Would that it were so in our programming languages.
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Is it possible that software is not like anything else.
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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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Training will not substantially help matters. We have to learn to live with it.
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In programming, as in everything else, to be in error is to be reborn.
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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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That it is meant to be discarded: that the whole point is to always see it as a soap bubble?
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Don’t have good ideas if you aren’t willing to be responsible for them.
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We began to feel as if we really were responsible for the successful, error-free perfect use of these machines.
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In man-machine symbiosis, it is man who must adjust: The machines can’t.
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Every reader should ask himself periodically.
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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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If a listener nods his head when you’re explaining your program, wake him up.
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Because of its vitality, the computing field is always in desperate need of new cliches.
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Computer Science is embarrassed by the computer.
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Once you understand how to write a program get someone else to write it.
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We toast the Lisp programmer who pens his thoughts within nests of parentheses.
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One can’t proceed from the informal to the formal by formal means.
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A good programming language is a conceptual universe for thinking about programming.
ALAN PERLIS