Optimization hinders evolution.
ALAN PERLISWhen 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.
More Alan Perlis Quotes
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In software systems it is often the early bird that makes the worm.
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Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.
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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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We began to feel as if we really were responsible for the successful, error-free perfect use of these machines.
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Every program has (at least) two purposes: the one for which it was written and another for which it wasn’t.
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If a listener nods his head when you’re explaining your program, wake him up.
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Training will not substantially help matters. We have to learn to live with it.
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There are two ways to write error-free programs; only the third one works.
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Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon.
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A language that doesn’t affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
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Because of its vitality, the computing field is always in desperate need of new cliches.
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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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Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.
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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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In programming, as in everything else, to be in error is to be reborn.
ALAN PERLIS