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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8: A programming language is low level when its programs require attention to the irrelevant.
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3: Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semi-colons.
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55: LISP programmers know the value of everything and the cost of nothing.
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We toast the Lisp programmer who pens his thoughts within nests of parentheses.
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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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79: A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
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31: Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.
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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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58: Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.
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Both knowledge and wisdom extend man's reach. Knowledge led to computers, wisdom to chopsticks.
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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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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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59: In English every word can be verbed. Would that it were so in our programming languages.
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80: Prolonged contact with the computer turns mathematicians into clerks and vice versa.
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57: It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice versa.
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11: If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some.
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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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42: You can measure a programmer's perspective by noting his attitude on the continuing vitality of FORTRAN.
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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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1: One man's constant is another man's variable.
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41: Some programming languages manage to absorb change, but withstand progress.