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A LISP programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of nothing.

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
Nothing
Lisp
Programmer
Programmers
Cost
Value
Values
Everything

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Computer Science is embarrassed by the computer.
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Optimization hinders evolution.
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A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
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Don't have good ideas if you aren't willing to be responsible for them.
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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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It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice versa.
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If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some.
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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 can't proceed from the informal to the formal by formal means.
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We are on the verge: Today our program proved Fermat's next-to-last theorem.
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A good programming language is a conceptual universe for thinking about programming.
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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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Adapting old programs to fit new machines usually means adapting new machines to behave like old ones.
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If your computer speaks English, it was probably made in Japan.
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In computing, turning the obvious into the useful is a living definition of the word frustration.
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Every program has (at least) two purposes: the one for which it was written and another for which it wasn't.
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In the long run, every program becomes rococo, and then rubble.
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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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