Quote

Because of its vitality, the computing field is always in desperate need of new cliches: Banality soothes our nerves.

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
Fields
Banality
Technology
Computing
Need
Cliche
Needs
Vitality
Always
Nerves
Desperate
Humorous
Soothes
Field
Cliches

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It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice versa.
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Once you understand how to write a program get someone else to write it.
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In man-machine symbiosis, it is man who must adjust: The machines can't.
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It is better to have 100 functions operate on one data structure than to have 10 functions operate on 10 data structures.
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A good programming language is a conceptual universe for thinking about programming.
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A programming language is low level when its programs require attention to the irrelevant.
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One man's constant is another man's variable.
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Learning French is trivial: the word for horse is cheval, and everything else follows in the same way.
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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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We toast the Lisp programmer who pens his thoughts within nests of parentheses.
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One can't proceed from the informal to the formal by formal means.
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In English every word can be verbed.
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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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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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Computer Science is embarrassed by the computer.
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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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In programming, as in everything else, to be in error is to be reborn.
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Optimization hinders evolution.
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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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In computing, the mean time to failure keeps getting shorter.
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