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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.

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
Written
Purpose
Another
Computing
Two
Purposes
Every
Programming
Program
Wasn
Least

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Optimization hinders evolution.
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Often it is the means that justify the ends: goals advance technique and technique survives even when goal structures crumble.
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One man's constant is another man's variable.
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If your computer speaks English, it was probably made in Japan.
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In programming, as in everything else, to be in error is to be reborn.
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Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon.
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There is no such thing as a free variable.
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Don't have good ideas if you aren't willing to be responsible for them.
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Motto for a research laboratory: what we work on today, others will first think of tomorrow.
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A programming language is low level when its programs require attention to the irrelevant.
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We toast the Lisp programmer who pens his thoughts within nests of parentheses.
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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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In English every word can be verbed.
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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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You can measure a programmer's perspective by noting his attitude on the continuing vitality of FORTRAN.
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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 computing, the mean time to failure keeps getting shorter.
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Some programming languages manage to absorb change, but withstand progress.
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To understand a program, you must become both the machine and the program.
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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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