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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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In English every word can be verbed.
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A programming language is low level when its programs require attention to the irrelevant.
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Motto for a research laboratory: what we work on today, others will first think of tomorrow.
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Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon.
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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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A LISP programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of nothing.
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In computing, the mean time to failure keeps getting shorter.
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In software systems it is often the early bird that makes the worm.
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We toast the Lisp programmer who pens his thoughts within nests of parentheses.
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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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Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.
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In man-machine symbiosis, it is man who must adjust: The machines can't.
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In computing, turning the obvious into the useful is a living definition of the word frustration.
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If your computer speaks English, it was probably made in Japan.
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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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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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One man's constant is another man's variable.
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There is no such thing as a free variable.
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In the long run, every program becomes rococo, and then rubble.
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