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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
Programmers
Cost
Value
Values
Everything
Nothing
Lisp
Programmer

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In man-machine symbiosis, it is man who must adjust: The machines can't.
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You can measure a programmer's perspective by noting his attitude on the continuing vitality of FORTRAN.
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One can't proceed from the informal to the formal by formal means.
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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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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.
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When someone says, I want a programming language in which I need only say what I want done, give him a lollipop.
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There is no such thing as a free variable.
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Optimization hinders evolution.
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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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In the long run, every program becomes rococo, and then rubble.
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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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Don't have good ideas if you aren't willing to be responsible for them.
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If a listener nods his head when you're explaining your program, wake him up.
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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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We toast the Lisp programmer who pens his thoughts within nests of parentheses.
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A programming language is low level when its programs require attention to the irrelevant.
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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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To understand a program, you must become both the machine and the program.
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In English every word can be verbed. Would that it were so in our programming languages.
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Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.
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