Quote

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.

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
Success
Solved
Easy
Dealing
Also
Improve
Problem
Investing
Hard
Math
Work
Handle
Failure
Wrong

More quotes by Alan Perlis

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We are on the verge: Today our program proved Fermat's next-to-last theorem.
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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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In English every word can be verbed.
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One man's constant is another man's variable.
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In computing, the mean time to failure keeps getting shorter.
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To understand a program, you must become both the machine and the program.
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In programming, as in everything else, to be in error is to be reborn.
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There is no such thing as a free variable.
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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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C programmers never die. They are just cast into void.
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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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Any noun can be verbed.
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Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.
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In English every word can be verbed. Would that it were so in our programming languages.
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A good programming language is a conceptual universe for thinking about programming.
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Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.
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When someone says, I want a programming language in which I need only say what I want done, give him a lollipop.
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Optimization hinders evolution.
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If a listener nods his head when you're explaining your program, wake him up.
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One can't proceed from the informal to the formal by formal means.
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