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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?
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
Always
Bubbles
Like
Software
Meant
Possible
Point
Else
Discarded
Anything
Bubble
Whole
Soap
More quotes by Alan Perlis
Motto for a research laboratory: what we work on today, others will first think of tomorrow.
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Some programming languages manage to absorb change, but withstand progress.
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Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.
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In the long run, every program becomes rococo, and then rubble.
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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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Often it is the means that justify the ends: goals advance technique and technique survives even when goal structures crumble.
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One man's constant is another man's variable.
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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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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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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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Computer Science is embarrassed by the computer.
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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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If your computer speaks English, it was probably made in Japan.
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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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One can't proceed from the informal to the formal by formal means.
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In man-machine symbiosis, it is man who must adjust: The machines can't.
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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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Any noun can be verbed.
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A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
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There is no such thing as a free variable.
Alan Perlis