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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
Good
Thinking
Conceptual
Programming
Learning
Universe
Language

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Computer Science is embarrassed by the computer.
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In English every word can be verbed.
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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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A programming language is low level when its programs require attention to the irrelevant.
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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 computing, the mean time to failure keeps getting shorter.
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We are on the verge: Today our program proved Fermat's next-to-last theorem.
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In man-machine symbiosis, it is man who must adjust: The machines can't.
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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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Programmers are not to be measured by their ingenuity and their logic but by the completeness of their case analysis.
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There is no such thing as a free variable.
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Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.
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If a listener nods his head when you're explaining your program, wake him up.
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In software systems it is often the early bird that makes the worm.
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To understand a program, you must become both the machine and the program.
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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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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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Often it is the means that justify the ends: goals advance technique and technique survives even when goal structures crumble.
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