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If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some.

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
Procedure
Parameters
Computing
Procedures
Missed
Probably

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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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To understand a program, you must become both the machine and the program.
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Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.
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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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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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A programming language is low level when its programs require attention to the irrelevant.
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In English every word can be verbed. Would that it were so in our programming languages.
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One can't proceed from the informal to the formal by formal means.
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Any noun can be verbed.
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The best book on programming for the layman is Alice in Wonderland, but that's because it's the best book on anything for the layman.
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If your computer speaks English, it was probably made in Japan.
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If a listener nods his head when you're explaining your program, wake him up.
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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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Often it is the means that justify the ends: goals advance technique and technique survives even when goal structures crumble.
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Some programming languages manage to absorb change, but withstand progress.
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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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In software systems it is often the early bird that makes the worm.
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There is no such thing as a free variable.
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In the long run, every program becomes rococo, and then rubble.
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