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There are two ways to write error-free programs only the third one works.

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
Writing
Errors
Way
Program
Programmers
Computer
Programs
Works
Programming
Ways
Software
Free
Error
Write
Third
Two
Thirds

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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 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 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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Programmers are not to be measured by their ingenuity and their logic but by the completeness of their case analysis.
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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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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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To understand a program, you must become both the machine and the program.
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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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A good programming language is a conceptual universe for thinking about programming.
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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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Once you understand how to write a program get someone else to write it.
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There is no such thing as a free variable.
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Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon.
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One man's constant is another man's variable.
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C programmers never die. They are just cast into void.
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We are on the verge: Today our program proved Fermat's next-to-last theorem.
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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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If your computer speaks English, it was probably made in Japan.
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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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A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
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