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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
Analysis
Logic
Case
Cases
Completeness
Programmers
Ingenuity
Measured

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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 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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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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In software systems it is often the early bird that makes the worm.
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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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A programming language is low level when its programs require attention to the irrelevant.
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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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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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Motto for a research laboratory: what we work on today, others will first think of tomorrow.
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One man's constant is another man's variable.
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We toast the Lisp programmer who pens his thoughts within nests of parentheses.
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We are on the verge: Today our program proved Fermat's next-to-last theorem.
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It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice versa.
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C programmers never die. They are just cast into void.
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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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Any noun can be verbed.
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If your computer speaks English, it was probably made in Japan.
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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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A LISP programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of nothing.
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