You’ve solved the wrong problem. Work hard to improve.
ALAN PERLISEvery program has (at least) two purposes: the one for which it was written and another for which it wasn’t.
More Alan Perlis Quotes
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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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I think that it’s extraordinarily important that we in computer science keep fun in computing.
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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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You think you KNOW when you learn.
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A programming language is low level when its programs require attention to the irrelevant.
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Work hard to improve. Success is also easy to handle.
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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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In the long run, every program becomes rococo, and then rubble.
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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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To understand a program, you must become both the machine and the program.
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Everything should be built top-down, except the first time.
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Once you understand how to write a program get someone else to write it.
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In English every word can be verbed. Would that it were so in our programming languages.
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C programmers never die. They are just cast into void.
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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 year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
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In man-machine symbiosis, it is man who must adjust: The machines can’t.
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Motto for a research laboratory: what we work on today, others will first think of tomorrow.
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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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One man’s constant is another man’s variable.
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A picture is worth 10K words – but only those to describe the picture.
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Computer Science is embarrassed by the computer.
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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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Like seeing, movement or flow or alteration of view is more important than the static picture, no matter how lovely.
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You can measure a programmer’s perspective by noting his attitude on the continuing vitality of FORTRAN.
ALAN PERLIS