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

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A LISP programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of nothing.
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In programming, as in everything else, to be in error is to be reborn.
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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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Computer Science is embarrassed by the computer.
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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 English every word can be verbed. Would that it were so in our programming languages.
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In computing, turning the obvious into the useful is a living definition of the word frustration.
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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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I think it is inevitable that people program poorly. Training will not substantially help matters. We have to learn to live with it.
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One man's constant is another man's variable.
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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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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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One can't proceed from the informal to the formal by formal means.
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We are on the verge: Today our program proved Fermat's next-to-last theorem.
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FORTRAN is not a flower but a weed - it is hardy, occasionally blooms, and grows in every computer.
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In the long run, every program becomes rococo, and then rubble.
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If your computer speaks English, it was probably made in Japan.
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In software systems it is often the early bird that makes the worm.
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If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some.
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