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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
Procedures
Missed
Probably
Procedure
Parameters
Computing

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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 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 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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Don't have good ideas if you aren't willing to be responsible for them.
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In software systems it is often the early bird that makes the worm.
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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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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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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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If a listener nods his head when you're explaining your program, wake him up.
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When a professor insists computer science is X but not Y, have compassion for his graduate students.
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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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Often it is the means that justify the ends: goals advance technique and technique survives even when goal structures crumble.
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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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A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
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There is no such thing as a free variable.
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One can't proceed from the informal to the formal by formal means.
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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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Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.
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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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Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.
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