A picture is worth 10K words – but only those to describe the picture.
ALAN PERLISWe are on the verge: Today our program proved Fermat’s next-to-last theorem.
More Alan Perlis Quotes
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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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Banality soothes our nerves.
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In English every word can be verbed. Would that it were so in our programming languages.
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If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some.
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We are on the verge: Today our program proved Fermat’s next-to-last theorem.
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Some programming languages manage to absorb change, but withstand progress.
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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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In computing, the mean time to failure keeps getting shorter.
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In man-machine symbiosis, it is man who must adjust: The machines can’t.
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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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To understand a program, you must become both the machine and the program.
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A programming language is low level when its programs require attention to the irrelevant.
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Hardly any sets of 10K words can be adequately described with pictures.
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If your computer speaks English, it was probably made in Japan.
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Any noun can be verbed.
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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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Are more sure when you can write, even more when you can teach, but certain when you can program.
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Because of its vitality, the computing field is always in desperate need of new cliches.
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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 the long run, every program becomes rococo, and then rubble.
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Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon.
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Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.
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It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice versa.
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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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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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Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.
ALAN PERLIS