Alan Perlis

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If your computer speaks English, it was probably made in Japan.
- Alan Perlis
Collection: Computers
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In computing, turning the obvious into the useful is a living definition of the word 'frustration'.
- Alan Perlis
Collection: Computers
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A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
- Alan Perlis
Collection: God
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I think it is inevitable that people program poorly. Training will not substantially help matters. We have to learn to live with it.
- Alan Perlis
Collection: Technology
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You can measure a programmer's perspective by noting his attitude on the continuing vitality of FORTRAN.
- Alan Perlis
Collection: Attitude
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It goes against the grain of modern education to teach students to program. What fun is there to making plans, acquiring discipline, organizing thoughts, devoting attention to detail, and learning to be self critical.
- Alan Perlis
Collection: Learning
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In software systems it is often the early bird that makes the worm.
- Alan Perlis
Collection: Technology
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Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.
- Alan Perlis
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Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.
- Alan Perlis
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One man's constant is another man's variable.
- Alan Perlis
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There are two ways to write error-free programs; only the third one works.
- Alan Perlis
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If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some.
- Alan Perlis
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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.
- Alan Perlis
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A programming language is low level when its programs require attention to the irrelevant.
- Alan Perlis
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It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice versa.
- Alan Perlis
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Is it possible that software is not like anything else, that it is meant to be discarded: that the whole point is to always see it as a soap bubble?
- Alan Perlis
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Every program has two purposes: The one for which it was written and another for which it wasn't.
- Alan Perlis
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It is easier to write an incorrect program than understand a correct one.
- Alan Perlis
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Computer Science is embarrassed by the computer.
- Alan Perlis
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Some programming languages manage to absorb change, but withstand progress.
- Alan Perlis
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LISP programmers know the value of everything and the cost of nothing.
- Alan Perlis
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In English every word can be verbed. Would that it were so in our programming languages.
- Alan Perlis
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If a listener nods his head when you're explaining your program, wake him up.
- Alan Perlis
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The computing field is always in need of new cliches.
- Alan Perlis
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A picture is worth 10K words - but only those to describe the picture. Hardly any sets of 10K words can be adequately described with pictures.
- Alan Perlis
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Don't have good ideas if you aren't willing to be responsible for them.
- Alan Perlis
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We toast the Lisp programmer who pens his thoughts within nests of parentheses.
- Alan Perlis
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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.
- Alan Perlis
Collection: Trust
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A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
- Alan Perlis
Collection: Learning
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To understand a program, you must become both the machine and the program.
- Alan Perlis
Collection: Learning
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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.
- Alan Perlis
Collection: Funny Inspirational
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You think you KNOW when you learn, are more sure when you can write, even more when you can teach, but certain when you can program.
- Alan Perlis
Collection: Writing
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C programmers never die. They are just cast into void.
- Alan Perlis
Collection: Void
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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.
- Alan Perlis
Collection: Book
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In the long run, every program becomes rococo, and then rubble.
- Alan Perlis
Collection: Running
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Optimization hinders evolution. Everything should be built top-down, except the first time. Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.
- Alan Perlis
Collection: Top Down
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In man-machine symbiosis, it is man who must adjust: The machines can't.
- Alan Perlis
Collection: Men
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Dealing with failure is easy: Work hard to improve. Success is also easy to handle: You've solved the wrong problem. Work hard to improve.
- Alan Perlis
Collection: Hard Work
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I think that it's extraordinarily important that we in computer science keep fun in computing. 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. We began to feel as if we really were responsible for the successful, error-free perfect use of these machines. I don't think we are. I think we're responsible for stretching them, setting them off in new directions, and keeping fun in the house. I hope the field of computer science never loses its sense of fun.
- Alan Perlis
Collection: Fun
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Programmers are not to be measured by their ingenuity and their logic but by the completeness of their case analysis.
- Alan Perlis
Collection: Analysis
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Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon.
- Alan Perlis
Collection: Cancer
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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.
- Alan Perlis
Collection: Two
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In English every word can be verbed.
- Alan Perlis
Collection: Language
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Adapting old programs to fit new machines usually means adapting new machines to behave like old ones.
- Alan Perlis
Collection: Mean
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It goes against the grain of modern education to teach children to program. What fun is there in making plans, acquiring discipline in organizing thoughts, devoting attention to detail and learning to be self-critical?
- Alan Perlis
Collection: Fun
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A good programming language is a conceptual universe for thinking about programming.
- Alan Perlis
Collection: Learning
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In computing, the mean time to failure keeps getting shorter.
- Alan Perlis
Collection: Mean
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Motto for a research laboratory: what we work on today, others will first think of tomorrow.
- Alan Perlis
Collection: Thinking
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When a professor insists computer science is X but not Y, have compassion for his graduate students.
- Alan Perlis
Collection: Compassion
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A LISP programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of nothing.
- Alan Perlis
Collection: Cost