Quote

In English every word can be verbed. Would that it were so in our programming languages.

Alan Perlis

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Would
Languages
Programming
English
Word
Language
Every

More quotes by Alan Perlis

Image
To understand a program, you must become both the machine and the program.
Alan Perlis
Image
A picture is worth 10K words - but only those to describe the picture. Hardly any sets of 10K words can be adequately described with pictures.
Alan Perlis
Image
In the long run, every program becomes rococo, and then rubble.
Alan Perlis
Image
One can't proceed from the informal to the formal by formal means.
Alan Perlis
Image
You can measure a programmer's perspective by noting his attitude on the continuing vitality of FORTRAN.
Alan Perlis
Image
Some programming languages manage to absorb change, but withstand progress.
Alan Perlis
Image
In programming, as in everything else, to be in error is to be reborn.
Alan Perlis
Image
A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
Alan Perlis
Image
In software systems it is often the early bird that makes the worm.
Alan Perlis
Image
It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice versa.
Alan Perlis
Image
In English every word can be verbed.
Alan Perlis
Image
There is no such thing as a free variable.
Alan Perlis
Image
Programmers are not to be measured by their ingenuity and their logic but by the completeness of their case analysis.
Alan Perlis
Image
When a professor insists computer science is X but not Y, have compassion for his graduate students.
Alan Perlis
Image
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.
Alan Perlis
Image
If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some.
Alan Perlis
Image
One man's constant is another man's variable.
Alan Perlis
Image
Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.
Alan Perlis
Image
Often it is the means that justify the ends: goals advance technique and technique survives even when goal structures crumble.
Alan Perlis
Image
A good programming language is a conceptual universe for thinking about programming.
Alan Perlis