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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
Program
Level
Levels
Programmers
Attention
Irrelevant
Language
Programs
Programming
Require
Lows

More quotes by Alan Perlis

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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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It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice versa.
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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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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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It goes against the grain of modern education to teach children to program. What fun is there in making plans, acquiring discipline in organizing thoughts, devoting attention to detail and learning to be self-critical?
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If your computer speaks English, it was probably made in Japan.
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One man's constant is another man's variable.
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One can't proceed from the informal to the formal by formal means.
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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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Don't have good ideas if you aren't willing to be responsible for them.
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We are on the verge: Today our program proved Fermat's next-to-last theorem.
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There are two ways to write error-free programs only the third one works.
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In programming, as in everything else, to be in error is to be reborn.
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If a listener nods his head when you're explaining your program, wake him up.
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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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In computing, turning the obvious into the useful is a living definition of the word frustration.
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Some programming languages manage to absorb change, but withstand progress.
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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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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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Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.
Alan Perlis