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We toast the Lisp programmer who pens his thoughts within nests of parentheses.

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
Programmer
Toast
Toasts
Nests
Programmers
Pens
Thoughts
Parentheses
Within
Lisp

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To understand a program, you must become both the machine and the program.
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In software systems it is often the early bird that makes the worm.
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Some programming languages manage to absorb change, but withstand progress.
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If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some.
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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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Motto for a research laboratory: what we work on today, others will first think of tomorrow.
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If your computer speaks English, it was probably made in Japan.
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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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In computing, turning the obvious into the useful is a living definition of the word frustration.
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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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We are on the verge: Today our program proved Fermat's next-to-last theorem.
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Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon.
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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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In man-machine symbiosis, it is man who must adjust: The machines can't.
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Once you understand how to write a program get someone else to write it.
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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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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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Because of its vitality, the computing field is always in desperate need of new cliches: Banality soothes our nerves.
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Computer Science is embarrassed by the computer.
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