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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.

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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Any noun can be verbed.
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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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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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Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.
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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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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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In the long run, every program becomes rococo, and then rubble.
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One can't proceed from the informal to the formal by formal means.
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C programmers never die. They are just cast into void.
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There are two ways to write error-free programs only the third one works.
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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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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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It goes against the grain of modern education to teach children to program. What fun is there in making plans, acquiring discipline in organizing thoughts, devoting attention to detail and learning to be self-critical?
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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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In English every word can be verbed.
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We are on the verge: Today our program proved Fermat's next-to-last theorem.
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A programming language is low level when its programs require attention to the irrelevant.
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