A programming language is low level when its programs require attention to the irrelevant.
ALAN PERLISFORTRAN is not a flower but a weed – it is hardy, occasionally blooms, and grows in every computer.
More Alan Perlis Quotes
-
-
Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.
ALAN PERLIS -
C programmers never die. They are just cast into void.
ALAN PERLIS -
Training will not substantially help matters. We have to learn to live with it.
ALAN PERLIS -
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 PERLIS -
It is better to have 100 functions operate on one data structure than to have 10 functions operate on 10 data structures.
ALAN PERLIS -
Some programming languages manage to absorb change, but withstand progress.
ALAN PERLIS -
Don’t have good ideas if you aren’t willing to be responsible for them.
ALAN PERLIS -
One can only display complex information in the mind.
ALAN PERLIS -
FORTRAN is not a flower but a weed – it is hardy, occasionally blooms, and grows in every computer.
ALAN PERLIS -
Learning French is trivial: the word for horse is cheval, and everything else follows in the same way.
ALAN PERLIS -
That it is meant to be discarded: that the whole point is to always see it as a soap bubble?
ALAN PERLIS -
In man-machine symbiosis, it is man who must adjust: The machines can’t.
ALAN PERLIS -
Work hard to improve. Success is also easy to handle.
ALAN PERLIS -
In the long run, every program becomes rococo, and then rubble.
ALAN PERLIS -
A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
ALAN PERLIS






