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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
Word
Funny
Else
Trivial
Everything
Follows
Way
French
Horse
Humor
Learning

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If a listener nods his head when you're explaining your program, wake him up.
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In software systems it is often the early bird that makes the worm.
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Some programming languages manage to absorb change, but withstand progress.
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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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A good programming language is a conceptual universe for thinking about programming.
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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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Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.
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In the long run, every program becomes rococo, and then rubble.
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In English every word can be verbed. Would that it were so in our programming languages.
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Adapting old programs to fit new machines usually means adapting new machines to behave like old ones.
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If your computer speaks English, it was probably made in Japan.
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Any noun can be verbed.
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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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Often it is the means that justify the ends: goals advance technique and technique survives even when goal structures crumble.
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A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
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Once you understand how to write a program get someone else to write it.
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The best book on programming for the layman is Alice in Wonderland, but that's because it's the best book on anything for the layman.
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To understand a program, you must become both the machine and the program.
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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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We are on the verge: Today our program proved Fermat's next-to-last theorem.
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