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One can only display complex information in the mind. Like seeing, movement or flow or alteration of view is more important than the static picture, no matter how lovely.

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
Views
Display
Information
Complexes
Seeing
Complex
Matter
Lovely
Important
Picture
Mind
Flow
Alteration
Like
View
Alterations
Movement
Static

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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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A programming language is low level when its programs require attention to the irrelevant.
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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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Because of its vitality, the computing field is always in desperate need of new cliches: Banality soothes our nerves.
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If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some.
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In English every word can be verbed. Would that it were so in our programming languages.
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In computing, the mean time to failure keeps getting shorter.
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Computer Science is embarrassed by the computer.
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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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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 language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
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Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon.
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There are two ways to write error-free programs only the third one works.
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Any noun can be verbed.
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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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We toast the Lisp programmer who pens his thoughts within nests of parentheses.
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Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.
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In programming, as in everything else, to be in error is to be reborn.
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