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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.

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
Sure
Learn
Write
Certain
Writing
Programming
Even
Program
Think
Learning
Thinking
Teach

More quotes by Alan Perlis

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There are two ways to write error-free programs only the third one works.
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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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It is better to have 100 functions operate on one data structure than to have 10 functions operate on 10 data structures.
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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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If your computer speaks English, it was probably made in Japan.
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Optimization hinders evolution.
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We are on the verge: Today our program proved Fermat's next-to-last theorem.
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In programming, as in everything else, to be in error is to be reborn.
Alan Perlis
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Learning French is trivial: the word for horse is cheval, and everything else follows in the same way.
Alan Perlis
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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.
Alan Perlis
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One man's constant is another man's variable.
Alan Perlis
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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.
Alan Perlis
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In computing, the mean time to failure keeps getting shorter.
Alan Perlis
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In the long run, every program becomes rococo, and then rubble.
Alan Perlis
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A good programming language is a conceptual universe for thinking about programming.
Alan Perlis
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A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
Alan Perlis
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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.
Alan Perlis
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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.
Alan Perlis
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Programmers are not to be measured by their ingenuity and their logic but by the completeness of their case analysis.
Alan Perlis
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In computing, turning the obvious into the useful is a living definition of the word frustration.
Alan Perlis