Training will not substantially help matters. We have to learn to live with it.
ALAN PERLISOften it is the means that justify the ends: goals advance technique and technique survives even when goal structures crumble.
More Alan Perlis Quotes
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It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice versa.
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A good programming language is a conceptual universe for thinking about programming.
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In computing, turning the obvious into the useful is a living definition of the word “frustration”.
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Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.
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Don’t have good ideas if you aren’t willing to be responsible for them.
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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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Often it is the means that justify the ends: goals advance technique and technique survives even when goal structures crumble.
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“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.
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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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A LISP programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of nothing.
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In computing, the mean time to failure keeps getting shorter.
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Are more sure when you can write, even more when you can teach, but certain when you can program.
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There is no such thing as a free variable.
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Motto for a research laboratory: what we work on today, others will first think of tomorrow.
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In the long run, every program becomes rococo, and then rubble.
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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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Computer Science is embarrassed by the computer.
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Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon.
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I think that it’s extraordinarily important that we in computer science keep fun in computing.
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There are two ways to write error-free programs; only the third one works.
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One can only display complex information in the mind.
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Hardly any sets of 10K words can be adequately described with pictures.
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It goes against the grain of modern education to teach children to program.
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Everything should be built top-down, except the first time.
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If a listener nods his head when you’re explaining your program, wake him up.
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In man-machine symbiosis, it is man who must adjust: The machines can’t.
ALAN PERLIS