Motto for a research laboratory: what we work on today, others will first think of tomorrow.
ALAN PERLISAny noun can be verbed.
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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Everything should be built top-down, except the first time.
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In English every word can be verbed.
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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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A good programming language is a conceptual universe for thinking about programming.
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A language that doesn’t affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
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Training will not substantially help matters. We have to learn to live with 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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We are on the verge: Today our program proved Fermat’s next-to-last theorem.
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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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Optimization hinders evolution.
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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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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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Banality soothes our nerves.
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