Because of its vitality, the computing field is always in desperate need of new cliches.
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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Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon.
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The best book on programming for the layman is Alice in Wonderland, but that’s because it’s the best book on anything for the layman.
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Optimization hinders evolution.
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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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Optimization hinders evolution.
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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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Once you understand how to write a program get someone else to write it.
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C programmers never die. They are just cast into void.
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Learning French is trivial: the word for horse is cheval, and everything else follows in the same way.
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Training will not substantially help matters. We have to learn to live with it.
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Every reader should ask himself periodically.
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When someone says, “I want a programming language in which I need only say what I want done,” give him a lollipop.
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A programming language is low level when its programs require attention to the irrelevant.
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When a professor insists computer science is X but not Y, have compassion for his graduate students.
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Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.
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It goes against the grain of modern education to teach children to program.
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Is it possible that software is not like anything else.
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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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A LISP programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of nothing.
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Everything should be built top-down, except the first time.
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Some programming languages manage to absorb change, but withstand progress.
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Computer Science is embarrassed by the computer.
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In English every word can be verbed.
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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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Programmers are not to be measured by their ingenuity and their logic but by the completeness of their case analysis.
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One man’s constant is another man’s variable.
ALAN PERLIS