Quote

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
Funny
Else
Trivial
Everything
Follows
Way
French
Horse
Humor
Learning
Word

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A LISP programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of nothing.
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There are two ways to write error-free programs only the third one works.
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We are on the verge: Today our program proved Fermat's next-to-last theorem.
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Don't have good ideas if you aren't willing to be responsible for them.
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Motto for a research laboratory: what we work on today, others will first think of tomorrow.
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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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To understand a program, you must become both the machine and the program.
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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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Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.
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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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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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If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some.
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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 year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
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Computer Science is embarrassed by the computer.
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If a listener nods his head when you're explaining your program, wake him up.
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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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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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Any noun can be verbed.
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