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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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In the long run, every program becomes rococo, and then rubble.
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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 toast the Lisp programmer who pens his thoughts within nests of parentheses.
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Programmers are not to be measured by their ingenuity and their logic but by the completeness of their case analysis.
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To understand a program, you must become both the machine and the program.
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In man-machine symbiosis, it is man who must adjust: The machines can't.
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There are two ways to write error-free programs only the third one works.
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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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Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove 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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One can't proceed from the informal to the formal by formal means.
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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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You can measure a programmer's perspective by noting his attitude on the continuing vitality of FORTRAN.
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In English every word can be verbed.
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If your computer speaks English, it was probably made in Japan.
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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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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?
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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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In software systems it is often the early bird that makes the worm.
Alan Perlis
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Often it is the means that justify the ends: goals advance technique and technique survives even when goal structures crumble.
Alan Perlis