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Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.
Alan Perlis
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Alan Perlis
Age: 67 †
Born: 1922
Born: April 1
Died: 1990
Died: February 7
Computer Scientist
Mathematician
University Teacher
Pittsburg
Pennsylvania
Alan Jay Perlis
Alan J. Perlis
Complexity
Remove
Suffer
Avoid
Fool
Pragmatists
Genius
Geniuses
Suffering
Fools
Ignore
More quotes by Alan Perlis
There are two ways to write error-free programs only the third one works.
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A programming language is low level when its programs require attention to the irrelevant.
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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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Learning French is trivial: the word for horse is cheval, and everything else follows in the same way.
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C programmers never die. They are just cast into void.
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You can measure a programmer's perspective by noting his attitude on the continuing vitality of FORTRAN.
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To understand a program, you must become both the machine and the program.
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There is no such thing as a free variable.
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Any noun can be verbed.
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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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Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.
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Motto for a research laboratory: what we work on today, others will first think of tomorrow.
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In man-machine symbiosis, it is man who must adjust: The machines can't.
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It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice versa.
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Every reader should ask himself periodically “Toward what end, toward what end?”—but do not ask it too often lest you pass up the fun of programming for the constipation of bittersweet philosophy.
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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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A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
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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.
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If a listener nods his head when you're explaining your program, wake him up.
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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.
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