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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
Failure
Getting
Mean
Time
Computing
Shorter
Keeps

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In man-machine symbiosis, it is man who must adjust: The machines can't.
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The best book on programming for the layman is Alice in Wonderland, but that's because it's the best book on anything for the layman.
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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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Any noun can be verbed.
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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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One can't proceed from the informal to the formal by formal means.
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Learning French is trivial: the word for horse is cheval, and everything else follows in the same way.
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There are two ways to write error-free programs only the third one works.
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Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.
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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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Once you understand how to write a program get someone else to write it.
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Some programming languages manage to absorb change, but withstand progress.
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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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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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A good programming language is a conceptual universe for thinking about programming.
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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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It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice versa.
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A programming language is low level when its programs require attention to the irrelevant.
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In the long run, every program becomes rococo, and then rubble.
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Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.
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