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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
FORTRAN is not a flower but a weed - it is hardy, occasionally blooms, and grows in every computer.
Alan Perlis
When someone says, I want a programming language in which I need only say what I want done, give him a lollipop.
Alan Perlis
Any noun can be verbed.
Alan Perlis
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
To understand a program, you must become both the machine and the program.
Alan Perlis
Motto for a research laboratory: what we work on today, others will first think of tomorrow.
Alan Perlis
Once you understand how to write a program get someone else to write it.
Alan Perlis
In the long run, every program becomes rococo, and then rubble.
Alan Perlis
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
When a professor insists computer science is X but not Y, have compassion for his graduate students.
Alan Perlis
A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
Alan Perlis
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
In English every word can be verbed. Would that it were so in our programming languages.
Alan Perlis
One can't proceed from the informal to the formal by formal means.
Alan Perlis
A programming language is low level when its programs require attention to the irrelevant.
Alan Perlis
Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.
Alan Perlis
It is better to have 100 functions operate on one data structure than to have 10 functions operate on 10 data structures.
Alan Perlis
If a listener nods his head when you're explaining your program, wake him up.
Alan Perlis
In computing, the mean time to failure keeps getting shorter.
Alan Perlis
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