Quote

Optimization hinders evolution. Everything should be built top-down, except the first time. Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.

Alan Perlis

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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

More quotes by Alan Perlis

Image
We are on the verge: Today our program proved Fermat's next-to-last theorem.
Alan Perlis
Image
To understand a program, you must become both the machine and the program.
Alan Perlis
Image
If a listener nods his head when you're explaining your program, wake him up.
Alan Perlis
Image
In the long run, every program becomes rococo, and then rubble.
Alan Perlis
Image
Programmers are not to be measured by their ingenuity and their logic but by the completeness of their case analysis.
Alan Perlis
Image
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?
Alan Perlis
Image
In software systems it is often the early bird that makes the worm.
Alan Perlis
Image
There is no such thing as a free variable.
Alan Perlis
Image
There are two ways to write error-free programs only the third one works.
Alan Perlis
Image
If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some.
Alan Perlis
Image
FORTRAN is not a flower but a weed - it is hardy, occasionally blooms, and grows in every computer.
Alan Perlis
Image
When a professor insists computer science is X but not Y, have compassion for his graduate students.
Alan Perlis
Image
Once you understand how to write a program get someone else to write it.
Alan Perlis
Image
In man-machine symbiosis, it is man who must adjust: The machines can't.
Alan Perlis
Image
Optimization hinders evolution.
Alan Perlis
Image
Every program has (at least) two purposes: the one for which it was written and another for which it wasn't.
Alan Perlis
Image
Motto for a research laboratory: what we work on today, others will first think of tomorrow.
Alan Perlis
Image
In programming, as in everything else, to be in error is to be reborn.
Alan Perlis
Image
Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.
Alan Perlis
Image
In computing, turning the obvious into the useful is a living definition of the word frustration.
Alan Perlis