Alan Perlis Quotes
-
In man-machine symbiosis, it is man who must adjust: The machines can't.
→ -
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.
→ -
Computer Science is embarrassed by the computer.
→ -
In programming, as in everything else, to be in error is to be reborn.
→ -
One can't proceed from the informal to the formal by formal means.
→ -
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.
→ -
There are two ways to write error-free programs; only the third one works.
→ -
In English every word can be verbed. Would that it were so in our programming languages.
→ -
Optimization hinders evolution. Everything should be built top-down, except the first time. Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.
→ -
Some programming languages manage to absorb change, but withstand progress.
→ -
A programming language is low level when its programs require attention to the irrelevant.
→ -
Optimization hinders evolution.
→ -
Programmers are not to be measured by their ingenuity and their logic but by the completeness of their case analysis.
→ -
When someone says, "I want a programming language in which I need only say what I want done," give him a lollipop.
→ -
It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice versa.
→ -
In computing, turning the obvious into the useful is a living definition of the word "frustration".
→ -
I think that it's extraordinarily important that we in computer science keep fun in computing. When it started out, it was an awful lot of fun. Of course, the paying customers got shafted every now and then, and after a while we began to take their complaints seriously. We began to feel as if we really were responsible for the successful, error-free perfect use of these machines. I don't think we are. I think we're responsible for stretching them, setting them off in new directions, and keeping fun in the house. I hope the field of computer science never loses its sense of fun.
→ -
You can measure a programmer's perspective by noting his attitude on the continuing vitality of FORTRAN.
→ -
Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon.
→ -
In computing, the mean time to failure keeps getting shorter.
→ -
Once you understand how to write a program get someone else to write it.
→ -
Adapting old programs to fit new machines usually means adapting new machines to behave like old ones.
→ -
FORTRAN is not a flower but a weed - it is hardy, occasionally blooms, and grows in every computer.
→ -
In the long run, every program becomes rococo, and then rubble.
→ -
One man's constant is another man's variable.
→ -
If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some.
→ -
Often it is the means that justify the ends: goals advance technique and technique survives even when goal structures crumble.
→ -
When a professor insists computer science is X but not Y, have compassion for his graduate students.
→ -
Any noun can be verbed.
→ -
A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
→
Related Authors
-
Luis Sepúlveda Writer -
Hal Abelson Professor -
Maurice Wilkes Computer Scientist -
Edsger Dijkstra Computer Scientist -
Andrew Carnegie Business magnate -
Alan Kay Computer Scientist -
Robert W. Floyd Computer Scientist -
Friedrich L. Bauer Computer Scientist -
-
Frances Allen Computer Scientist -
Niklaus Wirth Computer Scientist -
Donald Knuth Computer Scientist -
Tony Hoare Computer Scientist -
Alan Turing Mathematician -
Mitch Daniels Former Governor of Indiana -
Bjarne Stroustrup Scientist -
Cassandra Clare Author -
Allen Newell Researcher -
Gerald Jay Sussman Electrical engineer -
John Backus Computer Scientist