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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
Machine
Machines
Must
Men
Symbiosis
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There is no such thing as a free variable.
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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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Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.
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There are two ways to write error-free programs only the third one works.
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In programming, as in everything else, to be in error is to be reborn.
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A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
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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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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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Programmers are not to be measured by their ingenuity and their logic but by the completeness of their case analysis.
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In English every word can be verbed. Would that it were so in our programming languages.
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Any noun can be verbed.
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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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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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If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some.
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Optimization hinders evolution.
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A programming language is low level when its programs require attention to the irrelevant.
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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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A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
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We toast the Lisp programmer who pens his thoughts within nests of parentheses.
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