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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.
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
Time
Simplicity
Evolution
Except
Optimization
Built
Hinders
Doe
Precede
Firsts
Hinder
Everything
Follows
First
Complexity
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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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Because of its vitality, the computing field is always in desperate need of new cliches: Banality soothes our nerves.
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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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Often it is the means that justify the ends: goals advance technique and technique survives even when goal structures crumble.
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In English every word can be verbed. Would that it were so in our programming languages.
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If a listener nods his head when you're explaining your program, wake him up.
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Once you understand how to write a program get someone else to write it.
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Don't have good ideas if you aren't willing to be responsible for them.
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C programmers never die. They are just cast into void.
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In computing, the mean time to failure keeps getting shorter.
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