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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
Understand
Become
Must
Programming
Machine
Machines
Program
Learning

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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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Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon.
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In English every word can be verbed.
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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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Because of its vitality, the computing field is always in desperate need of new cliches: Banality soothes our nerves.
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A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
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Programmers are not to be measured by their ingenuity and their logic but by the completeness of their case analysis.
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A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
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A good programming language is a conceptual universe for thinking about programming.
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There are two ways to write error-free programs only the third one works.
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If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some.
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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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When someone says, I want a programming language in which I need only say what I want done, give him a lollipop.
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Any noun can be verbed.
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Don't have good ideas if you aren't willing to be responsible for them.
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In programming, as in everything else, to be in error is to be reborn.
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Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.
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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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A LISP programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of nothing.
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Optimization hinders evolution.
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