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In man-machine symbiosis, it is man who must adjust: The machines can't.

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
Men
Symbiosis
Adjust
Machine
Machines
Must

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Optimization hinders evolution.
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To understand a program, you must become both the machine and the program.
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In software systems it is often the early bird that makes the worm.
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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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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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Computer Science is embarrassed by the computer.
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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 computing, the mean time to failure keeps getting shorter.
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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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We toast the Lisp programmer who pens his thoughts within nests of parentheses.
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In the long run, every program becomes rococo, and then rubble.
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There are two ways to write error-free programs only the third one works.
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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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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 programming, as in everything else, to be in error is to be reborn.
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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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In computing, turning the obvious into the useful is a living definition of the word frustration.
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