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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
Vice
Vices
Fit
Program
Computer
Specification
Easier
Specifications
Change
Versa
Programming

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A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
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In English every word can be verbed. Would that it were so in our programming languages.
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Optimization hinders evolution.
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A programming language is low level when its programs require attention to the irrelevant.
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Motto for a research laboratory: what we work on today, others will first think of tomorrow.
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We are on the verge: Today our program proved Fermat's next-to-last theorem.
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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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Adapting old programs to fit new machines usually means adapting new machines to behave like old ones.
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There is no such thing as a free variable.
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Any noun can be verbed.
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Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.
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Once you understand how to write a program get someone else to write it.
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One can't proceed from the informal to the formal by formal means.
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In man-machine symbiosis, it is man who must adjust: The machines can't.
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We toast the Lisp programmer who pens his thoughts within nests of parentheses.
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