Alan Perlis Quotes - Page 2

In software systems it is often the early bird that makes the worm.

Adapting old programs to fit new machines usually means adapting new machines to behave like old ones.

A good programming language is a conceptual universe for thinking about programming.

In computing, the mean time to failure keeps getting shorter.

Motto for a research laboratory: what we work on today, others will first think of tomorrow.

When a professor insists computer science is X but not Y, have compassion for his graduate students.

It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice versa.

A LISP programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of nothing.

Some programming languages manage to absorb change, but withstand progress.

Is it possible that software is not like anything else, that it is meant to be discarded: that the whole point is to always see it as a soap bubble?

One can only display complex information in the mind. Like seeing, movement or flow or alteration of view is more important than the static picture, no matter how lovely.

In computing, turning the obvious into the useful is a living definition of the word "frustration".

Computer Science is embarrassed by the computer.

Learning French is trivial: the word for horse is cheval, and everything else follows in the same way.

You can measure a programmer's perspective by noting his attitude on the continuing vitality of FORTRAN.

Often it is the means that justify the ends: goals advance technique and technique survives even when goal structures crumble.

I think it is inevitable that people program poorly. Training will not substantially help matters. We have to learn to live with it.

We toast the Lisp programmer who pens his thoughts within nests of parentheses.

Optimization hinders evolution.

Every reader should ask himself periodically “Toward what end, toward what end?”—but do not ask it too often lest you pass up the fun of programming for the constipation of bittersweet philosophy.

Once you understand how to write a program get someone else to write it.

If your computer speaks English, it was probably made in Japan.

In programming, as in everything else, to be in error is to be reborn.

There is no such thing as a free variable.

If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some.