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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
Writing
Program
Understand
Write
Else
Someone

More quotes by Alan Perlis

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To understand a program, you must become both the machine and the program.
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Because of its vitality, the computing field is always in desperate need of new cliches: Banality soothes our nerves.
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Some programming languages manage to absorb change, but withstand progress.
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In software systems it is often the early bird that makes the worm.
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Computer Science is embarrassed by the computer.
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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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A good programming language is a conceptual universe for thinking about programming.
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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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A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
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Motto for a research laboratory: what we work on today, others will first think of tomorrow.
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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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Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.
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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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You can measure a programmer's perspective by noting his attitude on the continuing vitality of FORTRAN.
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If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some.
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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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Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.
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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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We toast the Lisp programmer who pens his thoughts within nests of parentheses.
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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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