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When a professor insists computer science is X but not Y, have compassion for his graduate students.

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
Computer
Compassion
Students
Science
Insists
Graduate
Professor
Graduates
Professors

More quotes by Alan Perlis

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We are on the verge: Today our program proved Fermat's next-to-last theorem.
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Motto for a research laboratory: what we work on today, others will first think of tomorrow.
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Some programming languages manage to absorb change, but withstand progress.
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A LISP programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of nothing.
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In programming, as in everything else, to be in error is to be reborn.
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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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Often it is the means that justify the ends: goals advance technique and technique survives even when goal structures crumble.
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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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Because of its vitality, the computing field is always in desperate need of new cliches: Banality soothes our nerves.
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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.
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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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In English every word can be verbed.
Alan Perlis
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One man's constant is another man's variable.
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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 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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Learning French is trivial: the word for horse is cheval, and everything else follows in the same way.
Alan Perlis