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To understand a program, you must become both the machine and the program.

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
Must
Programming
Machine
Machines
Program
Learning
Understand
Become

More quotes by Alan Perlis

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A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
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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.
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Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.
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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.
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Don't have good ideas if you aren't willing to be responsible for them.
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In software systems it is often the early bird that makes the worm.
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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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It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice versa.
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In computing, the mean time to failure keeps getting shorter.
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In English every word can be verbed.
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There are two ways to write error-free programs only the third one works.
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We toast the Lisp programmer who pens his thoughts within nests of parentheses.
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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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Because of its vitality, the computing field is always in desperate need of new cliches: Banality soothes our nerves.
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You can measure a programmer's perspective by noting his attitude on the continuing vitality of FORTRAN.
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We are on the verge: Today our program proved Fermat's next-to-last theorem.
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A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
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Every program has (at least) two purposes: the one for which it was written and another for which it wasn't.
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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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In the long run, every program becomes rococo, and then rubble.
Alan Perlis