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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
Words
Adequately
Described
Sets
Describe
Hardly
Pictures
Picture
Swag
Worth
Swagger

More quotes by Alan Perlis

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Computer Science is embarrassed by the computer.
Alan Perlis
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Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.
Alan Perlis
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Dealing with failure is easy: Work hard to improve. Success is also easy to handle: You've solved the wrong problem. Work hard to improve.
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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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.
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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A LISP programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of nothing.
Alan Perlis
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There is no such thing as a free variable.
Alan Perlis
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In software systems it is often the early bird that makes the worm.
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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If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some.
Alan Perlis
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In the long run, every program becomes rococo, and then rubble.
Alan Perlis
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I think it is inevitable that people program poorly. Training will not substantially help matters. We have to learn to live with it.
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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Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.
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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In man-machine symbiosis, it is man who must adjust: The machines can'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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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.
Alan Perlis
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A programming language is low level when its programs require attention to the irrelevant.
Alan Perlis