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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
Definition
Turning
Definitions
Useful
Obvious
Computer
Computing
Word
Frustrated
Living
Frustration

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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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You can measure a programmer's perspective by noting his attitude on the continuing vitality of FORTRAN.
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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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In English every word can be verbed. Would that it were so in our programming languages.
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A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
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If a listener nods his head when you're explaining your program, wake him up.
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One man's constant is another man's variable.
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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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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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Don't have good ideas if you aren't willing to be responsible for them.
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A programming language is low level when its programs require attention to the irrelevant.
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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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In software systems it is often the early bird that makes the worm.
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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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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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Motto for a research laboratory: what we work on today, others will first think of tomorrow.
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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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We toast the Lisp programmer who pens his thoughts within nests of parentheses.
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In man-machine symbiosis, it is man who must adjust: The machines can'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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