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In computing, the mean time to failure keeps getting shorter.

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
Computing
Shorter
Keeps
Failure
Getting
Mean
Time

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A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
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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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We toast the Lisp programmer who pens his thoughts within nests of parentheses.
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Computer Science is embarrassed by the computer.
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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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Don't have good ideas if you aren't willing to be responsible for them.
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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.
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In computing, turning the obvious into the useful is a living definition of the word frustration.
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When someone says, I want a programming language in which I need only say what I want done, give him a lollipop.
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Motto for a research laboratory: what we work on today, others will first think of tomorrow.
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Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon.
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Because of its vitality, the computing field is always in desperate need of new cliches: Banality soothes our nerves.
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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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Every program has (at least) two purposes: the one for which it was written and another for which it wasn't.
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In software systems it is often the early bird that makes the worm.
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A programming language is low level when its programs require attention to the irrelevant.
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To understand a program, you must become both the machine and the program.
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One can only display complex information in the mind. Like seeing, movement or flow or alteration of view is more important than the static picture, no matter how lovely.
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A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
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Any noun can be verbed.
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