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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
Graduate
Professor
Graduates
Professors
Computer
Compassion
Students
Science
Insists

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Don't have good ideas if you aren't willing to be responsible for them.
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In man-machine symbiosis, it is man who must adjust: The machines can't.
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One man's constant is another man's variable.
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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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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 English every word can be verbed. Would that it were so in our programming languages.
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It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice versa.
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Some programming languages manage to absorb change, but withstand progress.
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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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There is no such thing as a free variable.
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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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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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Because of its vitality, the computing field is always in desperate need of new cliches: Banality soothes our nerves.
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If a listener nods his head when you're explaining your program, wake him up.
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Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.
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In computing, the mean time to failure keeps getting shorter.
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In programming, as in everything else, to be in error is to be reborn.
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Any noun can be verbed.
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One can't proceed from the informal to the formal by formal means.
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Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.
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