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If your computer speaks English, it was probably made in Japan.

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
Probably
Speak
Made
Speaks
Japan
English
Computer

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A good programming language is a conceptual universe for thinking about programming.
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Motto for a research laboratory: what we work on today, others will first think of tomorrow.
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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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Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.
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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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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 year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
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One man's constant is another man's variable.
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Computer Science is embarrassed by the computer.
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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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Don't have good ideas if you aren't willing to be responsible for them.
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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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In computing, turning the obvious into the useful is a living definition of the word frustration.
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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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Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon.
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In the long run, every program becomes rococo, and then rubble.
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To understand a program, you must become both the machine and the program.
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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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You can measure a programmer's perspective by noting his attitude on the continuing vitality of FORTRAN.
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Once you understand how to write a program get someone else to write it.
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