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.
ALAN PERLISBanality soothes our nerves.
More Alan Perlis Quotes
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If your computer speaks English, it was probably made in Japan.
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A programming language is low level when its programs require attention to the irrelevant.
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One can only display complex information in the mind.
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It goes against the grain of modern education to teach children to program.
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Optimization hinders evolution.
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In man-machine symbiosis, it is man who must adjust: The machines can’t.
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Dealing with failure is easy.
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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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There is no such thing as a free variable.
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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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Computer Science is embarrassed by the computer.
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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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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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Work hard to improve. Success is also easy to handle.
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Motto for a research laboratory: what we work on today, others will first think of tomorrow.
ALAN PERLIS






