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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
Understand
Write
Else
Someone
Writing
Program

More quotes by Alan Perlis

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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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We toast the Lisp programmer who pens his thoughts within nests of parentheses.
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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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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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Programmers are not to be measured by their ingenuity and their logic but by the completeness of their case analysis.
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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 year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
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Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon.
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In computing, turning the obvious into the useful is a living definition of the word frustration.
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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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You can measure a programmer's perspective by noting his attitude on the continuing vitality of FORTRAN.
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In English every word can be verbed. Would that it were so in our programming languages.
Alan Perlis
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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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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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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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Motto for a research laboratory: what we work on today, others will first think of tomorrow.
Alan Perlis
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A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
Alan Perlis
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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.
Alan Perlis
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A good programming language is a conceptual universe for thinking about programming.
Alan Perlis
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Don't have good ideas if you aren't willing to be responsible for them.
Alan Perlis