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FORTRAN is not a flower but a weed - it is hardy, occasionally blooms, and grows in every computer.

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
Hardy
Occasionally
Weed
Programming
Computer
Flower
Grows
Fortran
Every
Blooms

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Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon.
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A programming language is low level when its programs require attention to the irrelevant.
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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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Don't have good ideas if you aren't willing to be responsible for them.
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If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some.
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Motto for a research laboratory: what we work on today, others will first think of tomorrow.
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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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Some programming languages manage to absorb change, but withstand progress.
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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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There are two ways to write error-free programs only the third one works.
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A picture is worth 10K words - but only those to describe the picture. Hardly any sets of 10K words can be adequately described with pictures.
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To understand a program, you must become both the machine and the program.
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In English every word can be verbed. Would that it were so in our programming languages.
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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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A good programming language is a conceptual universe for thinking about programming.
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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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There is no such thing as a free variable.
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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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C programmers never die. They are just cast into void.
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Often it is the means that justify the ends: goals advance technique and technique survives even when goal structures crumble.
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