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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
Computer
Specification
Easier
Specifications
Change
Versa
Programming
Vice
Vices
Fit
Program

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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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A programming language is low level when its programs require attention to the irrelevant.
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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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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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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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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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Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon.
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One man's constant is another man's variable.
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In man-machine symbiosis, it is man who must adjust: The machines can't.
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In software systems it is often the early bird that makes the worm.
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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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C programmers never die. They are just cast into void.
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In the long run, every program becomes rococo, and then rubble.
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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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Every reader should ask himself periodically “Toward what end, toward what end?”—but do not ask it too often lest you pass up the fun of programming for the constipation of bittersweet philosophy.
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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 toast the Lisp programmer who pens his thoughts within nests of parentheses.
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