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Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon.

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
Syntactic
Semicolon
Lisp
Programming
Sugar
Cancer
Causes

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One can't proceed from the informal to the formal by formal means.
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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 man-machine symbiosis, it is man who must adjust: The machines can't.
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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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It goes against the grain of modern education to teach children to program. What fun is there in making plans, acquiring discipline in organizing thoughts, devoting attention to detail and learning to be self-critical?
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Optimization hinders evolution.
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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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In English every word can be verbed. Would that it were so in our programming languages.
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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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There are two ways to write error-free programs only the third one works.
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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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In computing, turning the obvious into the useful is a living definition of the word frustration.
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A good programming language is a conceptual universe for thinking about programming.
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Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.
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Once you understand how to write a program get someone else to write it.
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A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
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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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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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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 LISP programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of nothing.
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