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In software systems it is often the early bird that makes the worm.

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
Makes
Worm
Worms
Software
Systems
Bird
Early
Technology
Often

More quotes by Alan Perlis

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Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.
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Because of its vitality, the computing field is always in desperate need of new cliches: 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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One can't proceed from the informal to the formal by formal means.
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One man's constant is another man's variable.
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To understand a program, you must become both the machine and the program.
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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?
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A LISP programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of nothing.
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Don't have good ideas if you aren't willing to be responsible for them.
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It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice versa.
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If your computer speaks English, it was probably made in Japan.
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If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some.
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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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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.
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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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There are two ways to write error-free programs only the third one works.
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One can only display complex information in the mind. Like seeing, movement or flow or alteration of view is more important than the static picture, no matter how lovely.
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There is no such thing as a free variable.
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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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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.
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