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Programmers are not to be measured by their ingenuity and their logic but by the completeness of their case analysis.
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
Completeness
Programmers
Ingenuity
Measured
Analysis
Logic
Case
Cases
More quotes by Alan Perlis
In software systems it is often the early bird that makes the worm.
Alan Perlis
In English every word can be verbed. Would that it were so in our programming languages.
Alan Perlis
Every reader should ask himself periodically “Toward what end, toward what end?”—but do not ask it too often lest you pass up the fun of programming for the constipation of bittersweet philosophy.
Alan Perlis
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
If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some.
Alan Perlis
There are two ways to write error-free programs only the third one works.
Alan Perlis
Often it is the means that justify the ends: goals advance technique and technique survives even when goal structures crumble.
Alan Perlis
Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.
Alan Perlis
Every program has (at least) two purposes: the one for which it was written and another for which it wasn't.
Alan Perlis
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
In computing, turning the obvious into the useful is a living definition of the word frustration.
Alan Perlis
To understand a program, you must become both the machine and the program.
Alan Perlis
In English every word can be verbed.
Alan Perlis
Optimization hinders evolution. Everything should be built top-down, except the first time. Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.
Alan Perlis
In programming, as in everything else, to be in error is to be reborn.
Alan Perlis
Motto for a research laboratory: what we work on today, others will first think of tomorrow.
Alan Perlis
A LISP programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of nothing.
Alan Perlis
FORTRAN is not a flower but a weed - it is hardy, occasionally blooms, and grows in every computer.
Alan Perlis
One can't proceed from the informal to the formal by formal means.
Alan Perlis
Any noun can be verbed.
Alan Perlis