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Optimization hinders evolution.

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
Optimization
Hinders
Hinder
Programming
Evolution
Learning

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To understand a program, you must become both the machine and the program.
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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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In English every word can be verbed. Would that it were so in our programming languages.
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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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Motto for a research laboratory: what we work on today, others will first think of tomorrow.
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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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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 good programming language is a conceptual universe for thinking about programming.
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A LISP programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of nothing.
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When a professor insists computer science is X but not Y, have compassion for his graduate students.
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There are two ways to write error-free programs only the third one works.
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If your computer speaks English, it was probably made in Japan.
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Any noun can be verbed.
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In software systems it is often the early bird that makes the worm.
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In computing, turning the obvious into the useful is a living definition of the word frustration.
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C programmers never die. They are just cast into void.
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We are on the verge: Today our program proved Fermat's next-to-last theorem.
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Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.
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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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I think it is inevitable that people program poorly. Training will not substantially help matters. We have to learn to live with it.
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