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In the long run, every program becomes rococo, and then rubble.

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
Every
Long
Rococo
Rubble
Humorous
Program
Becomes
Running

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Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.
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Motto for a research laboratory: what we work on today, others will first think of tomorrow.
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A good programming language is a conceptual universe for thinking about programming.
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There is no such thing as a free variable.
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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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Programmers are not to be measured by their ingenuity and their logic but by the completeness of their case analysis.
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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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To understand a program, you must become both the machine and the program.
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It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice versa.
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A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
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If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some.
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C programmers never die. They are just cast into void.
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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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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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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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Adapting old programs to fit new machines usually means adapting new machines to behave like old ones.
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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.
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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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