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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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There is no such thing as a free variable.
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In software systems it is often the early bird that makes the worm.
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A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
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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 English every word can be verbed.
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In man-machine symbiosis, it is man who must adjust: The machines can't.
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A LISP programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of nothing.
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A programming language is low level when its programs require attention to the irrelevant.
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In English every word can be verbed. Would that it were so in our programming languages.
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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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Computer Science is embarrassed by the computer.
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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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One can't proceed from the informal to the formal by formal means.
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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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In computing, the mean time to failure keeps getting shorter.
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Every program has (at least) two purposes: the one for which it was written and another for which it wasn't.
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If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some.
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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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