Quote

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

Alan Perlis

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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

More quotes by Alan Perlis

Image
If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some.
Alan Perlis
Image
It is better to have 100 functions operate on one data structure than to have 10 functions operate on 10 data structures.
Alan Perlis
Image
It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice versa.
Alan Perlis
Image
I think it is inevitable that people program poorly. Training will not substantially help matters. We have to learn to live with it.
Alan Perlis
Image
Optimization hinders evolution. Everything should be built top-down, except the first time. Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.
Alan Perlis
Image
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?
Alan Perlis
Image
In English every word can be verbed.
Alan Perlis
Image
Learning French is trivial: the word for horse is cheval, and everything else follows in the same way.
Alan Perlis
Image
Every program has (at least) two purposes: the one for which it was written and another for which it wasn't.
Alan Perlis
Image
Any noun can be verbed.
Alan Perlis
Image
Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.
Alan Perlis
Image
Motto for a research laboratory: what we work on today, others will first think of tomorrow.
Alan Perlis
Image
To understand a program, you must become both the machine and the program.
Alan Perlis
Image
Some programming languages manage to absorb change, but withstand progress.
Alan Perlis
Image
Programmers are not to be measured by their ingenuity and their logic but by the completeness of their case analysis.
Alan Perlis
Image
Computer Science is embarrassed by the computer.
Alan Perlis
Image
In programming, as in everything else, to be in error is to be reborn.
Alan Perlis
Image
In software systems it is often the early bird that makes the worm.
Alan Perlis
Image
In computing, turning the obvious into the useful is a living definition of the word frustration.
Alan Perlis
Image
A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
Alan Perlis