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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
Program
Wasn
Least
Written
Purpose
Another
Computing
Two
Purposes
Every
Programming

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A picture is worth 10K words - but only those to describe the picture. Hardly any sets of 10K words can be adequately described with pictures.
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If your computer speaks English, it was probably made in Japan.
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Optimization hinders evolution. Everything should be built top-down, except the first time. 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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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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Learning French is trivial: the word for horse is cheval, and everything else follows in the same way.
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In computing, turning the obvious into the useful is a living definition of the word frustration.
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Once you understand how to write a program get someone else to write it.
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Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon.
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To understand a program, you must become both the machine and the program.
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It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice versa.
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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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C programmers never die. They are just cast into void.
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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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A LISP programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of nothing.
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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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Any noun can be verbed.
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Some programming languages manage to absorb change, but withstand progress.
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In man-machine symbiosis, it is man who must adjust: The machines can't.
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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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