Quote

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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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
Layman
Wonderland
Alice
Programming
Anything
Best
Book

More quotes by Alan Perlis

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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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Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.
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A programming language is low level when its programs require attention to the irrelevant.
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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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In English every word can be verbed.
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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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Learning French is trivial: the word for horse is cheval, and everything else follows in the same way.
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In programming, as in everything else, to be in error is to be reborn.
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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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You can measure a programmer's perspective by noting his attitude on the continuing vitality of FORTRAN.
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It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice versa.
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Once you understand how to write a program get someone else to write it.
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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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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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A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
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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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FORTRAN is not a flower but a weed - it is hardy, occasionally blooms, and grows in every computer.
Alan Perlis
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Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon.
Alan Perlis
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Often it is the means that justify the ends: goals advance technique and technique survives even when goal structures crumble.
Alan Perlis
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A LISP programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of nothing.
Alan Perlis