You can measure a programmer’s perspective by noting his attitude on the continuing vitality of FORTRAN.
ALAN PERLISOne man’s constant is another man’s variable.
More Alan Perlis Quotes
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In English every word can be verbed. Would that it were so in our programming languages.
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One can only display complex information in the mind.
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Dealing with failure is easy.
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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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I think it is inevitable that people program poorly.
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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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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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Programmers are not to be measured by their ingenuity and their logic but by the completeness of their case analysis.
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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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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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We are on the verge: Today our program proved Fermat’s next-to-last theorem.
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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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If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some.
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In man-machine symbiosis, it is man who must adjust: The machines can’t.
ALAN PERLIS