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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

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

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If a listener nods his head when you're explaining your program, wake him up.
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A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
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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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When a professor insists computer science is X but not Y, have compassion for his graduate students.
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Some programming languages manage to absorb change, but withstand progress.
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A good programming language is a conceptual universe for thinking about programming.
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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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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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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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Every program has (at least) two purposes: the one for which it was written and another for which it wasn't.
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Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.
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Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon.
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There is no such thing as a free variable.
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In English every word can be verbed. Would that it were so in our programming languages.
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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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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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A programming language is low level when its programs require attention to the irrelevant.
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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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You can measure a programmer's perspective by noting his attitude on the continuing vitality of FORTRAN.
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