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In computing, turning the obvious into the useful is a living definition of the word frustration.

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
Living
Frustration
Definition
Turning
Definitions
Useful
Obvious
Computer
Computing
Word
Frustrated

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Computer Science is embarrassed by the computer.
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Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.
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It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice versa.
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One man's constant is another man's variable.
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A good programming language is a conceptual universe for thinking about programming.
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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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Adapting old programs to fit new machines usually means adapting new machines to behave like old ones.
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We are on the verge: Today our program proved Fermat's next-to-last theorem.
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FORTRAN is not a flower but a weed - it is hardy, occasionally blooms, and grows in every computer.
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Motto for a research laboratory: what we work on today, others will first think of tomorrow.
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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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When a professor insists computer science is X but not Y, have compassion for his graduate students.
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In software systems it is often the early bird that makes the worm.
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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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One can't proceed from the informal to the formal by formal means.
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In computing, the mean time to failure keeps getting shorter.
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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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C programmers never die. They are just cast into void.
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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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Because of its vitality, the computing field is always in desperate need of new cliches: Banality soothes our nerves.
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