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A good programming language is a conceptual universe for thinking about programming.

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
Thinking
Conceptual
Programming
Learning
Universe
Language
Good

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If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some.
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In computing, the mean time to failure keeps getting shorter.
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One can't proceed from the informal to the formal by formal means.
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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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Any noun can be verbed.
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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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Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.
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Computer Science is embarrassed by the computer.
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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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It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice versa.
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In English every word can be verbed. Would that it were so in our programming languages.
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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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In English every word can be verbed.
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Once you understand how to write a program get someone else to write it.
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Optimization hinders evolution.
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Don't have good ideas if you aren't willing to be responsible for them.
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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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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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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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There are two ways to write error-free programs only the third one works.
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