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Once you understand how to write a program get someone else to write it.

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
Program
Understand
Write
Else
Someone
Writing

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A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
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A LISP programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of nothing.
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A good programming language is a conceptual universe for thinking about programming.
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You can measure a programmer's perspective by noting his attitude on the continuing vitality of FORTRAN.
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There is no such thing as a free variable.
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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 English every word can be verbed. Would that it were so in our programming languages.
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A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
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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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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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When a professor insists computer science is X but not Y, have compassion for his graduate students.
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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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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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It is better to have 100 functions operate on one data structure than to have 10 functions operate on 10 data structures.
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In software systems it is often the early bird that makes the worm.
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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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One can't proceed from the informal to the formal by formal means.
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In computing, the mean time to failure keeps getting shorter.
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Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon.
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It goes against the grain of modern education to teach children to program. What fun is there in making plans, acquiring discipline in organizing thoughts, devoting attention to detail and learning to be self-critical?
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