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C programmers never die. They are just cast into void.

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
Void
Cast
Casts
Dies
Never
Programmers

More quotes by Alan Perlis

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Programmers are not to be measured by their ingenuity and their logic but by the completeness of their case analysis.
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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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Optimization hinders evolution.
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One man's constant is another man's variable.
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A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
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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 English every word can be verbed. Would that it were so in our programming languages.
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If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some.
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We are on the verge: Today our program proved Fermat's next-to-last theorem.
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In the long run, every program becomes rococo, and then rubble.
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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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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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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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Because of its vitality, the computing field is always in desperate need of new cliches: Banality soothes our nerves.
Alan Perlis
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In computing, the mean time to failure keeps getting shorter.
Alan Perlis
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Motto for a research laboratory: what we work on today, others will first think of tomorrow.
Alan Perlis
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Learning French is trivial: the word for horse is cheval, and everything else follows in the same way.
Alan Perlis
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Any noun can be verbed.
Alan Perlis
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Computer Science is embarrassed by the computer.
Alan Perlis