I hope the field of computer science never loses its sense of fun.
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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If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some.
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Adapting old programs to fit new machines usually means adapting new machines to behave like old ones.
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It goes against the grain of modern education to teach children to program.
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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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A programming language is low level when its programs require attention to the irrelevant.
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In computing, turning the obvious into the useful is a living definition of the word “frustration”.
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In English every word can be verbed.
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Some programming languages manage to absorb change, but withstand progress.
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You’ve solved the wrong problem. Work hard to improve.
ALAN PERLIS -
Programmers are not to be measured by their ingenuity and their logic but by the completeness of their case analysis.
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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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A good programming language is a conceptual universe for thinking about programming.
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In the long run, every program becomes rococo, and then rubble.
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Every reader should ask himself periodically.
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In man-machine symbiosis, it is man who must adjust: The machines can’t.
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Optimization hinders evolution.
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It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice versa.
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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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Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.
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A picture is worth 10K words – but only those to describe the picture.
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I think it is inevitable that people program poorly.
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There are two ways to write error-free programs; only the third one works.
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There is no such thing as a free variable.
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A LISP programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of nothing.
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You think you KNOW when you learn.
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If a listener nods his head when you’re explaining your program, wake him up.
ALAN PERLIS