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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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When a professor insists computer science is X but not Y, have compassion for his graduate students.
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If your computer speaks English, it was probably made in Japan.
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Motto for a research laboratory: what we work on today, others will first think of tomorrow.
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If a listener nods his head when you're explaining your program, wake him up.
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In man-machine symbiosis, it is man who must adjust: The machines can't.
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Computer Science is embarrassed by the computer.
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There is no such thing as a free variable.
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The best book on programming for the layman is Alice in Wonderland, but that's because it's the best book on anything for the layman.
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In programming, as in everything else, to be in error is to be reborn.
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A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
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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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Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.
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A LISP programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of nothing.
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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 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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It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice versa.
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To understand a program, you must become both the machine and the program.
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Any noun can be verbed.
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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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Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.
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