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In programming, as in everything else, to be in error is to be reborn.

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
Everything
Reborn
Programmers
Programming
Error
Errors
Else

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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.
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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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Motto for a research laboratory: what we work on today, others will first think of tomorrow.
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In software systems it is often the early bird that makes the worm.
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One can't proceed from the informal to the formal by formal means.
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We toast the Lisp programmer who pens his thoughts within nests of parentheses.
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In computing, turning the obvious into the useful is a living definition of the word frustration.
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Optimization hinders evolution.
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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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Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.
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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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In the long run, every program becomes rococo, and then rubble.
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A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
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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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In English every word can be verbed. Would that it were so in our programming languages.
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There are two ways to write error-free programs only the third one works.
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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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If a listener nods his head when you're explaining your program, wake him up.
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One man's constant is another man's variable.
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Once you understand how to write a program get someone else to write it.
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