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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
Lisp
Programmer
Programmers
Cost
Value
Values
Everything
Nothing

More quotes by Alan Perlis

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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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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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Often it is the means that justify the ends: goals advance technique and technique survives even when goal structures crumble.
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A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
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In computing, turning the obvious into the useful is a living definition of the word frustration.
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In English every word can be verbed.
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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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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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You think you KNOW when you learn, are more sure when you can write, even more when you can teach, but certain when you can 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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A programming language is low level when its programs require attention to the irrelevant.
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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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FORTRAN is not a flower but a weed - it is hardy, occasionally blooms, and grows in every computer.
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Optimization hinders evolution.
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Any noun can be verbed.
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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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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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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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There is no such thing as a free variable.
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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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