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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
Nests
Programmers
Pens
Thoughts
Parentheses
Within
Lisp
Programmer
Toast
Toasts

More quotes by Alan Perlis

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Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.
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One man's constant is another man's variable.
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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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Learning French is trivial: the word for horse is cheval, and everything else follows in the same way.
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A LISP programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of nothing.
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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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Any noun can be verbed.
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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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In software systems it is often the early bird that makes the worm.
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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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When a professor insists computer science is X but not Y, have compassion for his graduate students.
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Some programming languages manage to absorb change, but withstand progress.
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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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Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.
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If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some.
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It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice versa.
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Motto for a research laboratory: what we work on today, others will first think of tomorrow.
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C programmers never die. They are just cast into void.
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There are two ways to write error-free programs only the third one works.
Alan Perlis