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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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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
Work
Laboratory
Think
Motto
Thinking
Research
Tomorrow
Others
Today
Firsts
First

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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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Because of its vitality, the computing field is always in desperate need of new cliches: Banality soothes our nerves.
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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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In English every word can be verbed. Would that it were so in our programming languages.
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To understand a program, you must become both the machine and the program.
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If your computer speaks English, it was probably made in Japan.
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Some programming languages manage to absorb change, but withstand progress.
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Computer Science is embarrassed by the computer.
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In computing, turning the obvious into the useful is a living definition of the word frustration.
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We are on the verge: Today our program proved Fermat's next-to-last theorem.
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A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
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In programming, as in everything else, to be in error is to be reborn.
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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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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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Any noun can be verbed.
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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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There are two ways to write error-free programs only the third one works.
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In English every word can be verbed.
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Adapting old programs to fit new machines usually means adapting new machines to behave like old ones.
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One man's constant is another man's variable.
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