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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

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To understand a program, you must become both the machine and the program.
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Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon.
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Once you understand how to write a program get someone else to write 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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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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You can measure a programmer's perspective by noting his attitude on the continuing vitality of FORTRAN.
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Optimization hinders evolution. Everything should be built top-down, except the first time. Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.
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In English every word can be verbed.
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If a listener nods his head when you're explaining your program, wake him up.
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Every program has (at least) two purposes: the one for which it was written and another for which it wasn't.
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It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice versa.
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We are on the verge: Today our program proved Fermat's next-to-last theorem.
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In computing, turning the obvious into the useful is a living definition of the word frustration.
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If your computer speaks English, it was probably made in Japan.
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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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A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
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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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We toast the Lisp programmer who pens his thoughts within nests of parentheses.
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Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.
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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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