Quote

It is better to have 100 functions operate on one data structure than to have 10 functions operate on 10 data structures.

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
Trust
Better
Structures
Functions
Operate
Data
Structure
Function

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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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C programmers never die. They are just cast into void.
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We toast the Lisp programmer who pens his thoughts within nests of parentheses.
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There are two ways to write error-free programs only the third one works.
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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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It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice versa.
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To understand a program, you must become both the machine and the program.
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In computing, turning the obvious into the useful is a living definition of the word frustration.
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Once you understand how to write a program get someone else to write it.
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A programming language is low level when its programs require attention to the irrelevant.
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If a listener nods his head when you're explaining your program, wake him up.
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Any noun can be verbed.
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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.
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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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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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If your computer speaks English, it was probably made in Japan.
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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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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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Programmers are not to be measured by their ingenuity and their logic but by the completeness of their case analysis.
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