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

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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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A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
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One can't proceed from the informal to the formal by formal means.
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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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Any noun can be verbed.
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Don't have good ideas if you aren't willing to be responsible for them.
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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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A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
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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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In software systems it is often the early bird that makes the worm.
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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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Computer Science is embarrassed by the computer.
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We toast the Lisp programmer who pens his thoughts within nests of parentheses.
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We are on the verge: Today our program proved Fermat's next-to-last theorem.
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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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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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To understand a program, you must become both the machine and the program.
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A good programming language is a conceptual universe for thinking about programming.
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