I hope the field of computer science never loses its sense of fun.
ALAN PERLISBecause of its vitality, the computing field is always in desperate need of new cliches.
More Alan Perlis Quotes
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One man’s constant is another man’s variable.
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We toast the Lisp programmer who pens his thoughts within nests of parentheses.
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Because of its vitality, the computing field is always in desperate need of new cliches.
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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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One can’t proceed from the informal to the formal by formal means.
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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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FORTRAN is not a flower but a weed – it is hardy, occasionally blooms, and grows in every computer.
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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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Often it is the means that justify the ends: goals advance technique and technique survives even when goal structures crumble.
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Dealing with failure is easy.
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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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Every reader should ask himself periodically.
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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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Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.
ALAN PERLIS