Alan Perlis Quotes

A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.

Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.

Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.

It is better to have 100 functions operate on one data structure than to have 10 functions operate on 10 data structures.

There are two ways to write error-free programs; only the third one works.

A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.

When someone says, "I want a programming language in which I need only say what I want done," give him a lollipop.

To understand a program, you must become both the machine and the program.

Don't have good ideas if you aren't willing to be responsible for them.

One man's constant is another man's variable.

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.

C programmers never die. They are just cast into void.

In the long run, every program becomes rococo, and then rubble.

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.

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

A programming language is low level when its programs require attention to the irrelevant.

In man-machine symbiosis, it is man who must adjust: The machines can't.

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.

Programmers are not to be measured by their ingenuity and their logic but by the completeness of their case analysis.

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.

Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon.

Every program has (at least) two purposes: the one for which it was written and another for which it wasn't.

If a listener nods his head when you're explaining your program, wake him up.

In English every word can be verbed.

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?