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One man's constant is another man's variable.
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
Men
Variable
Variables
Programmers
Constant
Another
More quotes by Alan Perlis
There are two ways to write error-free programs only the third one works.
Alan Perlis
A programming language is low level when its programs require attention to the irrelevant.
Alan Perlis
To understand a program, you must become both the machine and the program.
Alan Perlis
Every program has (at least) two purposes: the one for which it was written and another for which it wasn't.
Alan Perlis
Often it is the means that justify the ends: goals advance technique and technique survives even when goal structures crumble.
Alan Perlis
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?
Alan Perlis
Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.
Alan Perlis
Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.
Alan Perlis
In programming, as in everything else, to be in error is to be reborn.
Alan Perlis
Learning French is trivial: the word for horse is cheval, and everything else follows in the same way.
Alan Perlis
Because of its vitality, the computing field is always in desperate need of new cliches: Banality soothes our nerves.
Alan Perlis
Once you understand how to write a program get someone else to write it.
Alan Perlis
It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice versa.
Alan Perlis
In computing, the mean time to failure keeps getting shorter.
Alan Perlis
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
It is better to have 100 functions operate on one data structure than to have 10 functions operate on 10 data structures.
Alan Perlis
In man-machine symbiosis, it is man who must adjust: The machines can't.
Alan Perlis
Optimization hinders evolution. Everything should be built top-down, except the first time. Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.
Alan Perlis
If a listener nods his head when you're explaining your program, wake him up.
Alan Perlis
One can't proceed from the informal to the formal by formal means.
Alan Perlis