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Don't have good ideas if you aren't willing to be responsible for them.

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
Computing
Responsible
Aren
Willing
Ideas
Good

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Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon.
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A LISP programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of nothing.
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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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There is no such thing as a free variable.
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It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice versa.
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In English every word can be verbed.
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Motto for a research laboratory: what we work on today, others will first think of tomorrow.
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In computing, the mean time to failure keeps getting shorter.
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We toast the Lisp programmer who pens his thoughts within nests of parentheses.
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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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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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Computer Science is embarrassed by the computer.
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To understand a program, you must become both the machine and the program.
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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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FORTRAN is not a flower but a weed - it is hardy, occasionally blooms, and grows in every computer.
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Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows 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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One can't proceed from the informal to the formal by formal means.
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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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Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.
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