Quote

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
Wake
Program
Head
Nods
Listener
Listeners
Explaining

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Computer Science is embarrassed by the computer.
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One can't proceed from the informal to the formal by formal means.
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A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
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We are on the verge: Today our program proved Fermat's next-to-last theorem.
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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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You can measure a programmer's perspective by noting his attitude on the continuing vitality of FORTRAN.
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Any noun can be verbed.
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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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One man's constant is another man's variable.
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There is no such thing as a free variable.
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C programmers never die. They are just cast into void.
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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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Adapting old programs to fit new machines usually means adapting new machines to behave like old ones.
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In the long run, every program becomes rococo, and then rubble.
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Some programming languages manage to absorb change, but withstand progress.
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In English every word can be verbed. Would that it were so in our programming languages.
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In computing, turning the obvious into the useful is a living definition of the word frustration.
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In software systems it is often the early bird that makes the worm.
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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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It is better to have 100 functions operate on one data structure than to have 10 functions operate on 10 data structures.
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