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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
Variable
Variables
Free
Thing

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Don't have good ideas if you aren't willing to be responsible for them.
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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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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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In man-machine symbiosis, it is man who must adjust: The machines can't.
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Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon.
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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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A LISP programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of nothing.
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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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Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.
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In computing, turning the obvious into the useful is a living definition of the word frustration.
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Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows 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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Computer Science is embarrassed by the computer.
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In the long run, every program becomes rococo, and then rubble.
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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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If your computer speaks English, it was probably made in Japan.
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A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
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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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Because of its vitality, the computing field is always in desperate need of new cliches: Banality soothes our nerves.
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