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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
Nouns
Programming
Learning
Noun

More quotes by Alan Perlis

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There are two ways to write error-free programs only the third one works.
Alan Perlis
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Don't have good ideas if you aren't willing to be responsible for them.
Alan Perlis
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Often it is the means that justify the ends: goals advance technique and technique survives even when goal structures crumble.
Alan Perlis
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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?
Alan Perlis
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In English every word can be verbed. Would that it were so in our programming languages.
Alan Perlis
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If your computer speaks English, it was probably made in Japan.
Alan Perlis
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A LISP programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of nothing.
Alan Perlis
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In English every word can be verbed.
Alan Perlis
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We toast the Lisp programmer who pens his thoughts within nests of parentheses.
Alan Perlis
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One man's constant is another man's variable.
Alan Perlis
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One can't proceed from the informal to the formal by formal means.
Alan Perlis
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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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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.
Alan Perlis
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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.
Alan Perlis
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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.
Alan Perlis
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You can measure a programmer's perspective by noting his attitude on the continuing vitality of FORTRAN.
Alan Perlis
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Motto for a research laboratory: what we work on today, others will first think of tomorrow.
Alan Perlis
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A programming language is low level when its programs require attention to the irrelevant.
Alan Perlis
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A good programming language is a conceptual universe for thinking about programming.
Alan Perlis
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In programming, as in everything else, to be in error is to be reborn.
Alan Perlis