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In English every word can be verbed.

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
English
Word
Language
Every

More quotes by Alan Perlis

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In software systems it is often the early bird that makes the worm.
Alan Perlis
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Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.
Alan Perlis
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We toast the Lisp programmer who pens his thoughts within nests of parentheses.
Alan Perlis
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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.
Alan Perlis
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In the long run, every program becomes rococo, and then rubble.
Alan Perlis
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Some programming languages manage to absorb change, but withstand progress.
Alan Perlis
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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.
Alan Perlis
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Once you understand how to write a program get someone else to write it.
Alan Perlis
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One can't proceed from the informal to the formal by formal means.
Alan Perlis
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A LISP programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of nothing.
Alan Perlis
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It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice versa.
Alan Perlis
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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?
Alan Perlis
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A good programming language is a conceptual universe for thinking about programming.
Alan Perlis
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In English every word can be verbed. Would that it were so in our programming languages.
Alan Perlis
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There is no such thing as a free variable.
Alan Perlis
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Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.
Alan Perlis
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Every reader should ask himself periodically “Toward what end, toward what end?”—but do not ask it too often lest you pass up the fun of programming for the constipation of bittersweet philosophy.
Alan Perlis
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Computer Science is embarrassed by the computer.
Alan Perlis
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FORTRAN is not a flower but a weed - it is hardy, occasionally blooms, and grows in every computer.
Alan Perlis
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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.
Alan Perlis