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Learning French is trivial: the word for horse is cheval, and everything else follows in the same way.

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
Humor
Learning
Word
Funny
Else
Trivial
Everything
Follows
Way
French
Horse

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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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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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C programmers never die. They are just cast into void.
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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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A programming language is low level when its programs require attention to the irrelevant.
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In computing, turning the obvious into the useful is a living definition of the word frustration.
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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 man-machine symbiosis, it is man who must adjust: The machines can't.
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A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
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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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In the long run, every program becomes rococo, and then rubble.
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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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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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When a professor insists computer science is X but not Y, have compassion for his graduate students.
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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.
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Any noun can be verbed.
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There is no such thing as a free variable.
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There are two ways to write error-free programs only the third one works.
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