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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
Thinking
Research
Tomorrow
Others
Today
Firsts
First
Work
Laboratory
Think
Motto

More quotes by 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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Any noun can be verbed.
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In computing, the mean time to failure keeps getting shorter.
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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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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.
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A LISP programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of nothing.
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A good programming language is a conceptual universe for thinking about programming.
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Computer Science is embarrassed by the computer.
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It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice versa.
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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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If your computer speaks English, it was probably made in Japan.
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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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To understand a program, you must become both the machine and the program.
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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 are on the verge: Today our program proved Fermat's next-to-last theorem.
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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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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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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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