Alan Perlis Quotes
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16 Every program has (at least) two purposes: the one for which it was written and another for which it wasn't.
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We toast the Lisp programmer who pens his thoughts within nests of parentheses.
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55: LISP programmers know the value of everything and the cost of nothing.
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8: A programming language is low level when its programs require attention to the irrelevant.
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19: A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing.
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117: It goes against the grain of modern education to teach children to program. What fun is there to making plans, acquiring discipline in organizing thoughts, devoting attention to detail and, learning to be self-critical?
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79: A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
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Both knowledge and wisdom extend man's reach. Knowledge led to computers, wisdom to chopsticks.
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31: Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.
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58: Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.
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3: Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semi-colons.
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64: Often it is means that justify ends: Goals advance technique and technique survives even when goal structures crumble.
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101 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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57: It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice versa.
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80: Prolonged contact with the computer turns mathematicians into clerks and vice versa.
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59: In English every word can be verbed. Would that it were so in our programming languages.
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39: A picture is worth 10K words - but only those to describe the picture. Hardly any sets of 10K words can be adequately described with pictures.
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95: Don't have good ideas if you aren't willing to be responsible for them.
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75: The computing field is always in need of new cliches: Banality sooths our nerves.
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116: You think you know when you learn, are more sure when you can write, even more when you can teach, but certain when you can program.
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41: Some programming languages manage to absorb change, but withstand progress.
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11: If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some.
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42: You can measure a programmer's perspective by noting his attitude on the continuing vitality of FORTRAN.
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1: One man's constant is another man's variable.