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A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.

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
Knowing
Language
Doesn
Way
Affect
Think
Programming
Thinking
Program
Worth
Learning

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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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Don't have good ideas if you aren't willing to be responsible for them.
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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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Motto for a research laboratory: what we work on today, others will first think of tomorrow.
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Once you understand how to write a program get someone else to write it.
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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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When someone says, I want a programming language in which I need only say what I want done, give him a lollipop.
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To understand a program, you must become both the machine and the program.
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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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A programming language is low level when its programs require attention to the irrelevant.
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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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A LISP programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of nothing.
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There are two ways to write error-free programs only the third one works.
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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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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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Computer Science is embarrassed by the computer.
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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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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 year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
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In the long run, every program becomes rococo, and then rubble.
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