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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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When a professor insists computer science is X but not Y, have compassion for his graduate students.
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Don't have good ideas if you aren't willing to be responsible for them.
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I think it is inevitable that people program poorly. Training will not substantially help matters. We have to learn to live with 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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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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FORTRAN is not a flower but a weed - it is hardy, occasionally blooms, and grows in every computer.
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In man-machine symbiosis, it is man who must adjust: The machines can't.
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C programmers never die. They are just cast into void.
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It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice versa.
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A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
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A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
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Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon.
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Motto for a research laboratory: what we work on today, others will first think of tomorrow.
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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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