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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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If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some.
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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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Computer Science is embarrassed by the computer.
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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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If a listener nods his head when you're explaining your program, wake him up.
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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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One man's constant is another man's variable.
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One can't proceed from the informal to the formal by formal means.
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In the long run, every program becomes rococo, and then rubble.
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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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Programmers are not to be measured by their ingenuity and their logic but by the completeness of their case analysis.
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Any noun can be verbed.
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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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A good programming language is a conceptual universe for thinking about programming.
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Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove 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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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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C programmers never die. They are just cast into void.
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A LISP programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of nothing.
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If your computer speaks English, it was probably made in Japan.
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