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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
Firsts
Hinder
Everything
Follows
First
Complexity
Time
Simplicity
Evolution
Except
Optimization
Built
Hinders
Doe
Precede
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When a professor insists computer science is X but not Y, have compassion for his graduate students.
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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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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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In programming, as in everything else, to be in error is to be reborn.
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A programming language is low level when its programs require attention to the irrelevant.
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In English every word can be verbed.
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Don't have good ideas if you aren't willing to be responsible for them.
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In computing, the mean time to failure keeps getting shorter.
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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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It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice versa.
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Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon.
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In software systems it is often the early bird that makes the worm.
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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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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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We toast the Lisp programmer who pens his thoughts within nests of parentheses.
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In computing, turning the obvious into the useful is a living definition of the word frustration.
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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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