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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
Learning
Universe
Language
Good
Thinking
Conceptual
Programming

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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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We are on the verge: Today our program proved Fermat's next-to-last theorem.
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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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Every reader should ask himself periodically “Toward what end, toward what end?”—but do not ask it too often lest you pass up the fun of programming for the constipation of bittersweet philosophy.
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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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There are two ways to write error-free programs only the third one works.
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Computer Science is embarrassed by the computer.
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C programmers never die. They are just cast into void.
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In computing, the mean time to failure keeps getting shorter.
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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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Programmers are not to be measured by their ingenuity and their logic but by the completeness of their case analysis.
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A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
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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, turning the obvious into the useful is a living definition of the word frustration.
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Every program has (at least) two purposes: the one for which it was written and another for which it wasn't.
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Learning French is trivial: the word for horse is cheval, and everything else follows in the same way.
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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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A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
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We toast the Lisp programmer who pens his thoughts within nests of parentheses.
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