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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
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Fermat
Today
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Theorems
Verge
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More quotes by Alan Perlis

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A programming language is low level when its programs require attention to the irrelevant.
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One can't proceed from the informal to the formal by formal means.
Alan Perlis
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One man's constant is another man's variable.
Alan Perlis
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Once you understand how to write a program get someone else to write it.
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If a listener nods his head when you're explaining your program, wake him up.
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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.
Alan Perlis
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In software systems it is often the early bird that makes the worm.
Alan Perlis
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Optimization hinders evolution.
Alan Perlis
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In programming, as in everything else, to be in error is to be reborn.
Alan Perlis
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A LISP programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of nothing.
Alan Perlis
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There are two ways to write error-free programs only the third one works.
Alan Perlis
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There is no such thing as a free variable.
Alan Perlis
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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?
Alan Perlis
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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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Don't have good ideas if you aren't willing to be responsible for them.
Alan Perlis
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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.
Alan Perlis
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It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice versa.
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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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?
Alan Perlis
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In computing, turning the obvious into the useful is a living definition of the word frustration.
Alan Perlis