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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
Probably
Procedure
Parameters
Computing
Procedures
Missed
More quotes by Alan Perlis
In computing, turning the obvious into the useful is a living definition of the word frustration.
Alan Perlis
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?
Alan Perlis
One can't proceed from the informal to the formal by formal means.
Alan Perlis
Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon.
Alan Perlis
A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
Alan Perlis
Learning French is trivial: the word for horse is cheval, and everything else follows in the same way.
Alan Perlis
Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.
Alan Perlis
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.
Alan Perlis
In computing, the mean time to failure keeps getting shorter.
Alan Perlis
We toast the Lisp programmer who pens his thoughts within nests of parentheses.
Alan Perlis
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.
Alan Perlis
You can measure a programmer's perspective by noting his attitude on the continuing vitality of FORTRAN.
Alan Perlis
Once you understand how to write a program get someone else to write it.
Alan Perlis
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?
Alan Perlis
There is no such thing as a free variable.
Alan Perlis
Often it is the means that justify the ends: goals advance technique and technique survives even when goal structures crumble.
Alan Perlis
Optimization hinders evolution. Everything should be built top-down, except the first time. Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.
Alan Perlis
If a listener nods his head when you're explaining your program, wake him up.
Alan Perlis
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.
Alan Perlis
Motto for a research laboratory: what we work on today, others will first think of tomorrow.
Alan Perlis