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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.

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
Sets
Describe
Hardly
Pictures
Picture
Swag
Worth
Swagger
Words
Adequately
Described

More quotes by Alan Perlis

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FORTRAN is not a flower but a weed - it is hardy, occasionally blooms, and grows in every computer.
Alan Perlis
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If your computer speaks English, it was probably made in Japan.
Alan Perlis
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A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
Alan Perlis
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When someone says, I want a programming language in which I need only say what I want done, give him a lollipop.
Alan Perlis
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One man's constant is another man's variable.
Alan Perlis
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Some programming languages manage to absorb change, but withstand progress.
Alan Perlis
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When a professor insists computer science is X but not Y, have compassion for his graduate students.
Alan Perlis
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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.
Alan Perlis
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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?
Alan Perlis
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One can't proceed from the informal to the formal by formal means.
Alan Perlis
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In English every word can be verbed. Would that it were so in our programming languages.
Alan Perlis
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A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
Alan Perlis
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In programming, as in everything else, to be in error is to be reborn.
Alan Perlis
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C programmers never die. They are just cast into void.
Alan Perlis
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Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.
Alan Perlis
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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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Don't have good ideas if you aren't willing to be responsible for them.
Alan Perlis
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There are two ways to write error-free programs only the third one works.
Alan Perlis
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Often it is the means that justify the ends: goals advance technique and technique survives even when goal structures crumble.
Alan Perlis
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Optimization hinders evolution.
Alan Perlis