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Computer Science is embarrassed by the computer.

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
Science
Embarrassed
Computer

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Some programming languages manage to absorb change, but withstand progress.
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In software systems it is often the early bird that makes the worm.
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Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.
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In the long run, every program becomes rococo, and then rubble.
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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.
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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?
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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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Because of its vitality, the computing field is always in desperate need of new cliches: Banality soothes our nerves.
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If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some.
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Learning French is trivial: the word for horse is cheval, and everything else follows in the same way.
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A good programming language is a conceptual universe for thinking about programming.
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FORTRAN is not a flower but a weed - it is hardy, occasionally blooms, and grows in every computer.
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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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In English every word can be verbed. Would that it were so in our programming languages.
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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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In computing, the mean time to failure keeps getting shorter.
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Adapting old programs to fit new machines usually means adapting new machines to behave like old ones.
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Any noun can be verbed.
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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.
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You can measure a programmer's perspective by noting his attitude on the continuing vitality of FORTRAN.
Alan Perlis