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One can't proceed from the informal to the formal by formal means.

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
Informal
Proceed
Formal
Means
Mean

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A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
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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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C programmers never die. They are just cast into void.
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If a listener nods his head when you're explaining your program, wake him up.
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If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some.
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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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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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We are on the verge: Today our program proved Fermat's next-to-last theorem.
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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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Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon.
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Optimization hinders evolution.
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There is no such thing as a free variable.
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In computing, the mean time to failure keeps getting shorter.
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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.
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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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When a professor insists computer science is X but not Y, have compassion for his graduate students.
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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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It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice versa.
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A good programming language is a conceptual universe for thinking about programming.
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We toast the Lisp programmer who pens his thoughts within nests of parentheses.
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