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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.

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
Need
Lollipop
Done
Developers
Giving
Geek
Needs
Programming
Says
Language
Someone
Give

More quotes by Alan Perlis

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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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If your computer speaks English, it was probably made in Japan.
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Once you understand how to write a program get someone else to write it.
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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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There is no such thing as a free variable.
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In software systems it is often the early bird that makes the worm.
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In computing, the mean time to failure keeps getting shorter.
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In man-machine symbiosis, it is man who must adjust: The machines can't.
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A good programming language is a conceptual universe for thinking about programming.
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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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In English every word can be verbed.
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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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FORTRAN is not a flower but a weed - it is hardy, occasionally blooms, and grows in every computer.
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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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I think it is inevitable that people program poorly. Training will not substantially help matters. We have to learn to live with 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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A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
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If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some.
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Some programming languages manage to absorb change, but withstand progress.
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Often it is the means that justify the ends: goals advance technique and technique survives even when goal structures crumble.
Alan Perlis