Quote

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

Alan Perlis

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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

More quotes by Alan Perlis

Image
C programmers never die. They are just cast into void.
Alan Perlis
Image
FORTRAN is not a flower but a weed - it is hardy, occasionally blooms, and grows in every computer.
Alan Perlis
Image
In computing, turning the obvious into the useful is a living definition of the word frustration.
Alan Perlis
Image
Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.
Alan Perlis
Image
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
Image
A picture is worth 10K words - but only those to describe the picture. Hardly any sets of 10K words can be adequately described with pictures.
Alan Perlis
Image
I think it is inevitable that people program poorly. Training will not substantially help matters. We have to learn to live with it.
Alan Perlis
Image
One man's constant is another man's variable.
Alan Perlis
Image
In English every word can be verbed.
Alan Perlis
Image
A programming language is low level when its programs require attention to the irrelevant.
Alan Perlis
Image
We toast the Lisp programmer who pens his thoughts within nests of parentheses.
Alan Perlis
Image
Learning French is trivial: the word for horse is cheval, and everything else follows in the same way.
Alan Perlis
Image
Programmers are not to be measured by their ingenuity and their logic but by the completeness of their case analysis.
Alan Perlis
Image
We are on the verge: Today our program proved Fermat's next-to-last theorem.
Alan Perlis
Image
Because of its vitality, the computing field is always in desperate need of new cliches: Banality soothes our nerves.
Alan Perlis
Image
Optimization hinders evolution. Everything should be built top-down, except the first time. Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.
Alan Perlis
Image
Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon.
Alan Perlis
Image
Computer Science is embarrassed by the computer.
Alan Perlis
Image
In the long run, every program becomes rococo, and then rubble.
Alan Perlis
Image
If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some.
Alan Perlis