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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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In computing, the mean time to failure keeps getting shorter.
Alan Perlis
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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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Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon.
Alan Perlis
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Some programming languages manage to absorb change, but withstand progress.
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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Optimization hinders evolution.
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 computing, turning the obvious into the useful is a living definition of the word frustration.
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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Computer Science is embarrassed by the computer.
Alan Perlis
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In software systems it is often the early bird that makes the worm.
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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If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some.
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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There is no such thing as a free variable.
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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We are on the verge: Today our program proved Fermat's next-to-last theorem.
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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Don't have good ideas if you aren't willing to be responsible for them.
Alan Perlis
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In the long run, every program becomes rococo, and then rubble.
Alan Perlis