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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
Firsts
First
Work
Laboratory
Think
Motto
Thinking
Research
Tomorrow
Others
Today

More quotes by Alan Perlis

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Computer Science is embarrassed by the computer.
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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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Learning French is trivial: the word for horse is cheval, and everything else follows in the same way.
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In English every word can be verbed. Would that it were so in our programming languages.
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It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice versa.
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In software systems it is often the early bird that makes the worm.
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In English every word can be verbed.
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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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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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We are on the verge: Today our program proved Fermat's next-to-last theorem.
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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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Because of its vitality, the computing field is always in desperate need of new cliches: Banality soothes our nerves.
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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.
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Optimization hinders evolution.
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Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon.
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Some programming languages manage to absorb change, but withstand progress.
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If your computer speaks English, it was probably made in Japan.
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In programming, as in everything else, to be in error is to be reborn.
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A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
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To understand a program, you must become both the machine and the program.
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