Quote

Often it is the means that justify the ends: goals advance technique and technique survives even when goal structures crumble.

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
Even
Goals
Technique
Structure
Goal
Crumble
Means
Survives
Often
Structures
Ends
Advance
Mean
Justify

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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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If your computer speaks English, it was probably made in Japan.
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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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When someone says, I want a programming language in which I need only say what I want done, give him a lollipop.
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There are two ways to write error-free programs only the third one works.
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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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C programmers never die. They are just cast into void.
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Once you understand how to write a program get someone else to write it.
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Any noun can be verbed.
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In software systems it is often the early bird that makes the worm.
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One can't proceed from the informal to the formal by formal means.
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Motto for a research laboratory: what we work on today, others will first think of tomorrow.
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A LISP programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of nothing.
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Optimization hinders evolution. Everything should be built top-down, except the first time. Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.
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We are on the verge: Today our program proved Fermat's next-to-last theorem.
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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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A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
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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 good programming language is a conceptual universe for thinking about programming.
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One man's constant is another man's variable.
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