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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
Another
Computing
Two
Purposes
Every
Programming
Program
Wasn
Least
Written
Purpose

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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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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 good programming language is a conceptual universe for thinking about programming.
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Any noun can be verbed.
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In man-machine symbiosis, it is man who must adjust: The machines can't.
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Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.
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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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A programming language is low level when its programs require attention to the irrelevant.
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Motto for a research laboratory: what we work on today, others will first think of tomorrow.
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Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.
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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 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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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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If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some.
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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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There are two ways to write error-free programs only the third one works.
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One man's constant is another man's variable.
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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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Once you understand how to write a program get someone else to write it.
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Computer Science is embarrassed by the computer.
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