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It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice versa.

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
Programming
Vice
Vices
Fit
Program
Computer
Specification
Easier
Specifications
Change
Versa

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Computer Science is embarrassed by the computer.
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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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Learning French is trivial: the word for horse is cheval, and everything else follows in the same way.
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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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Once you understand how to write a program get someone else to write it.
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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.
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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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A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
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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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Often it is the means that justify the ends: goals advance technique and technique survives even when goal structures crumble.
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In computing, the mean time to failure keeps getting shorter.
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Adapting old programs to fit new machines usually means adapting new machines to behave like old ones.
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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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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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We are on the verge: Today our program proved Fermat's next-to-last theorem.
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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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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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Optimization hinders evolution.
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In programming, as in everything else, to be in error is to be reborn.
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