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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
Noun
Nouns
Programming
Learning

More quotes by Alan Perlis

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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.
Alan Perlis
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Learning French is trivial: the word for horse is cheval, and everything else follows in the same way.
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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Adapting old programs to fit new machines usually means adapting new machines to behave like old ones.
Alan Perlis
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A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
Alan Perlis
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Optimization hinders evolution.
Alan Perlis
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There is no such thing as a free variable.
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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In the long run, every program becomes rococo, and then rubble.
Alan Perlis
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A good programming language is a conceptual universe for thinking about programming.
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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One man's constant is another man's variable.
Alan Perlis
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Once you understand how to write a program get someone else to write it.
Alan Perlis
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In computing, turning the obvious into the useful is a living definition of the word frustration.
Alan Perlis
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Some programming languages manage to absorb change, but withstand progress.
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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When someone says, I want a programming language in which I need only say what I want done, give him a lollipop.
Alan Perlis
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We are on the verge: Today our program proved Fermat's next-to-last theorem.
Alan Perlis
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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.
Alan Perlis
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C programmers never die. They are just cast into void.
Alan Perlis