Quote

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

Alan Perlis

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Machines
Program
Learning
Understand
Become
Must
Programming
Machine

More quotes by Alan Perlis

Image
A programming language is low level when its programs require attention to the irrelevant.
Alan Perlis
Image
Computer Science is embarrassed by the computer.
Alan Perlis
Image
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.
Alan Perlis
Image
Don't have good ideas if you aren't willing to be responsible for them.
Alan Perlis
Image
Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.
Alan Perlis
Image
If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some.
Alan Perlis
Image
Often it is the means that justify the ends: goals advance technique and technique survives even when goal structures crumble.
Alan Perlis
Image
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
Image
Every program has (at least) two purposes: the one for which it was written and another for which it wasn't.
Alan Perlis
Image
Motto for a research laboratory: what we work on today, others will first think of tomorrow.
Alan Perlis
Image
In English every word can be verbed.
Alan Perlis
Image
It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice versa.
Alan Perlis
Image
There are two ways to write error-free programs only the third one works.
Alan Perlis
Image
In computing, the mean time to failure keeps getting shorter.
Alan Perlis
Image
When someone says, I want a programming language in which I need only say what I want done, give him a lollipop.
Alan Perlis
Image
In software systems it is often the early bird that makes the worm.
Alan Perlis
Image
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
Image
One man's constant is another man's variable.
Alan Perlis
Image
Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.
Alan Perlis
Image
We toast the Lisp programmer who pens his thoughts within nests of parentheses.
Alan Perlis