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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
Programmers
Vitality
Continuing
Measure
Perspective
Attitude
Fortran
Noting
Programmer

More quotes by Alan Perlis

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Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.
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Optimization hinders evolution.
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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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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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Because of its vitality, the computing field is always in desperate need of new cliches: Banality soothes our nerves.
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In computing, the mean time to failure keeps getting shorter.
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In computing, turning the obvious into the useful is a living definition of the word frustration.
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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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In software systems it is often the early bird that makes the worm.
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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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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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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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One man's constant is another man's variable.
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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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It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice versa.
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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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Programmers are not to be measured by their ingenuity and their logic but by the completeness of their case analysis.
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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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When a professor insists computer science is X but not Y, have compassion for his graduate students.
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If a listener nods his head when you're explaining your program, wake him up.
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