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There is no such thing as a free variable.

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
Variables
Free
Thing
Variable

More quotes by Alan Perlis

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We are on the verge: Today our program proved Fermat's next-to-last theorem.
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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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Adapting old programs to fit new machines usually means adapting new machines to behave like old ones.
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If your computer speaks English, it was probably made in Japan.
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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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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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In software systems it is often the early bird that makes the worm.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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Don't have good ideas if you aren't willing to be responsible for them.
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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?
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It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice versa.
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One can't proceed from the informal to the formal by formal means.
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A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
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In computing, the mean time to failure keeps getting shorter.
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C programmers never die. They are just cast into void.
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Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.
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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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Some programming languages manage to absorb change, but withstand progress.
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