Quote

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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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
Education
Discipline
Acquiring
Teach
Students
Organizing
Attention
Plans
Detail
Making
Thoughts
Grain
Self
Goes
Programming
Children
Fun
Details
Learning
Critical
Modern
Program
Devoting

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Motto for a research laboratory: what we work on today, others will first think of tomorrow.
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A good programming language is a conceptual universe for thinking about programming.
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In computing, the mean time to failure keeps getting shorter.
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We toast the Lisp programmer who pens his thoughts within nests of parentheses.
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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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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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Computer Science is embarrassed by the computer.
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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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Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon.
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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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If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some.
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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.
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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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FORTRAN is not a flower but a weed - it is hardy, occasionally blooms, and grows in every computer.
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In English every word can be verbed. Would that it were so in our programming languages.
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There is no such thing as a free variable.
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In the long run, every program becomes rococo, and then rubble.
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Because of its vitality, the computing field is always in desperate need of new cliches: Banality soothes our nerves.
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In computing, turning the obvious into the useful is a living definition of the word frustration.
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If a listener nods his head when you're explaining your program, wake him up.
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