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You can measure a programmer's perspective by noting his attitude on the continuing vitality of FORTRAN.

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
Noting
Programmer
Programmers
Vitality
Continuing
Measure
Perspective
Attitude
Fortran

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A good programming language is a conceptual universe for thinking about programming.
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Don't have good ideas if you aren't willing to be responsible for them.
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Computer Science is embarrassed by the computer.
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In programming, as in everything else, to be in error is to be reborn.
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Once you understand how to write a program get someone else to write it.
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In software systems it is often the early bird that makes the worm.
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A LISP programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of nothing.
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Optimization hinders evolution.
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It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice versa.
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Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon.
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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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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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In computing, turning the obvious into the useful is a living definition of the word frustration.
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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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To understand a program, you must become both the machine and the program.
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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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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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A picture is worth 10K words - but only those to describe the picture. Hardly any sets of 10K words can be adequately described with pictures.
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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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There is no such thing as a free variable.
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