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A programming language is low level when its programs require attention to the irrelevant.

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
Levels
Programmers
Attention
Irrelevant
Language
Programs
Programming
Require
Lows
Program
Level

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We are on the verge: Today our program proved Fermat's next-to-last theorem.
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A LISP programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of nothing.
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Any noun can be verbed.
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Once you understand how to write a program get someone else to write it.
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In programming, as in everything else, to be in error is to be reborn.
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Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon.
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One man's constant is another man's variable.
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Computer Science is embarrassed by the computer.
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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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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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Programmers are not to be measured by their ingenuity and their logic but by the completeness of their case analysis.
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In computing, turning the obvious into the useful is a living definition of the word frustration.
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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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You can measure a programmer's perspective by noting his attitude on the continuing vitality of FORTRAN.
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Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.
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Optimization hinders evolution.
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If your computer speaks English, it was probably made in Japan.
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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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In computing, the mean time to failure keeps getting shorter.
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We toast the Lisp programmer who pens his thoughts within nests of parentheses.
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