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We are on the verge: Today our program proved Fermat's next-to-last theorem.

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
Theorems
Verge
Proved
Program
Lasts
Last
Next
Fermat
Today
Theorem

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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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Any noun can be verbed.
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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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Motto for a research laboratory: what we work on today, others will first think of tomorrow.
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If your computer speaks English, it was probably made in Japan.
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Once you understand how to write a program get someone else to write 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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A LISP programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of nothing.
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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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Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows 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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Learning French is trivial: the word for horse is cheval, and everything else follows in the same way.
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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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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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Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon.
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To understand a program, you must become both the machine and the program.
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Some programming languages manage to absorb change, but withstand progress.
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C programmers never die. They are just cast into void.
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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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