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

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A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
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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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If your computer speaks English, it was probably made in Japan.
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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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Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.
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There is no such thing as a free variable.
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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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When a professor insists computer science is X but not Y, have compassion for his graduate students.
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It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice versa.
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If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some.
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C programmers never die. They are just cast into void.
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In the long run, every program becomes rococo, and then rubble.
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Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon.
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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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