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Adapting old programs to fit new machines usually means adapting new machines to behave like old ones.

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
Like
Behave
Machines
Fit
Program
Usually
Ones
Adapting
Means
Hardware
Mean
Programs

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In computing, turning the obvious into the useful is a living definition of the word frustration.
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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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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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You think you KNOW when you learn, are more sure when you can write, even more when you can teach, but certain when you can program.
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One can't proceed from the informal to the formal by formal means.
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If a listener nods his head when you're explaining your program, wake him up.
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If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some.
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Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.
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There is no such thing as a free variable.
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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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Any noun can be verbed.
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Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.
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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 man-machine symbiosis, it is man who must adjust: The machines can't.
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Motto for a research laboratory: what we work on today, others will first think of tomorrow.
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A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
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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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In computing, the mean time to failure keeps getting shorter.
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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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