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If a listener nods his head when you're explaining your program, wake him up.

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
Program
Head
Nods
Listener
Listeners
Explaining
Wake

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Some programming languages manage to absorb change, but withstand progress.
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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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If your computer speaks English, it was probably made in Japan.
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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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Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.
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In English every word can be verbed.
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Don't have good ideas if you aren't willing to be responsible for them.
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C programmers never die. They are just cast into void.
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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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Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.
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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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We toast the Lisp programmer who pens his thoughts within nests of parentheses.
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In programming, as in everything else, to be in error is to be reborn.
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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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One can only display complex information in the mind. Like seeing, movement or flow or alteration of view is more important than the static picture, no matter how lovely.
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A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
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Any noun can be verbed.
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Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon.
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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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