Quote

There is no such thing as a free variable.

Alan Perlis

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Variable
Variables
Free
Thing

More quotes by Alan Perlis

Image
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
Image
Programmers are not to be measured by their ingenuity and their logic but by the completeness of their case analysis.
Alan Perlis
Image
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
Image
Because of its vitality, the computing field is always in desperate need of new cliches: Banality soothes our nerves.
Alan Perlis
Image
Don't have good ideas if you aren't willing to be responsible for them.
Alan Perlis
Image
A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
Alan Perlis
Image
We are on the verge: Today our program proved Fermat's next-to-last theorem.
Alan Perlis
Image
Motto for a research laboratory: what we work on today, others will first think of tomorrow.
Alan Perlis
Image
In computing, turning the obvious into the useful is a living definition of the word frustration.
Alan Perlis
Image
Once you understand how to write a program get someone else to write it.
Alan Perlis
Image
When a professor insists computer science is X but not Y, have compassion for his graduate students.
Alan Perlis
Image
It goes against the grain of modern education to teach children to program. What fun is there in making plans, acquiring discipline in organizing thoughts, devoting attention to detail and learning to be self-critical?
Alan Perlis
Image
Optimization hinders evolution. Everything should be built top-down, except the first time. Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.
Alan Perlis
Image
Learning French is trivial: the word for horse is cheval, and everything else follows in the same way.
Alan Perlis
Image
If a listener nods his head when you're explaining your program, wake him up.
Alan Perlis
Image
A good programming language is a conceptual universe for thinking about programming.
Alan Perlis
Image
Often it is the means that justify the ends: goals advance technique and technique survives even when goal structures crumble.
Alan Perlis
Image
It is better to have 100 functions operate on one data structure than to have 10 functions operate on 10 data structures.
Alan Perlis
Image
Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.
Alan Perlis
Image
There are two ways to write error-free programs only the third one works.
Alan Perlis