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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

More quotes by Alan Perlis

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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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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 software systems it is often the early bird that makes the worm.
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Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.
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Optimization hinders evolution.
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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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FORTRAN is not a flower but a weed - it is hardy, occasionally blooms, and grows in every computer.
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In the long run, every program becomes rococo, and then rubble.
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We toast the Lisp programmer who pens his thoughts within nests of parentheses.
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If your computer speaks English, it was probably made in Japan.
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Don't have good ideas if you aren't willing to be responsible for them.
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Once you understand how to write a program get someone else to write it.
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When a professor insists computer science is X but not Y, have compassion for his graduate students.
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There are two ways to write error-free programs only the third one works.
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C programmers never die. They are just cast into void.
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Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.
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In man-machine symbiosis, it is man who must adjust: The machines can't.
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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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Because of its vitality, the computing field is always in desperate need of new cliches: Banality soothes our nerves.
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One man's constant is another man's variable.
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