Alan Perlis famous quotes

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

#Believe #Technology #Years

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

#Trust #Data #Structure

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

#Attention #Levels #Language

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

#Writing #Errors #Two

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

#Learning #Thinking #Knowing

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

#Technology #Bird #Worms

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

#Life And Love #Suffering #Genius

Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.
-- Alan Perlis

#Simplicity #Doe #Complexity

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

#Two #Purpose #Program

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

#Analysis #Logic #Cases

In English every word can be verbed.
-- Alan Perlis

#Language #English Language

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.
-- Alan Perlis

#Hard Work #Problem #Easy

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

#Change #Vices #Computer

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

#Ideas #Responsible #Computing

FORTRAN is not a flower but a weed - it is hardy, occasionally blooms, and grows in every computer.
-- Alan Perlis

#Weed #Flower #Computer

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

#Procedures #Parameters #Computing

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

#Attitude #Perspective #Vitality

It goes against the grain of modern education to teach students to program. What fun is there to making plans, acquiring discipline, organizing thoughts, devoting attention to detail, and learning to be self critical.
-- Alan Perlis

#Fun #Learning #Self

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.
-- Alan Perlis

#Fun #Learning #Successful

Any noun can be verbed.
-- Alan Perlis

#Learning #Nouns #Programming

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

#Funny Inspirational #Giving #Needs

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

#Frustration #Frustrated #Definitions

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

#Japan #Computer #Speak

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

#Technology #Thinking #People

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.
-- Alan Perlis

#Book #Wonderland #Programming

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?
-- Alan Perlis

#Soap #Software #Discarded

The computing field is always in need of new cliches.
-- Alan Perlis

#Technology #Needs #Fields

In English every word can be verbed. Would that it were so in our programming languages.
-- Alan Perlis

#Language #Programming #Programming Languages

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

#Men #Machines #Symbiosis

LISP programmers know the value of everything and the cost of nothing.
-- Alan Perlis

#Cost #Values

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

#Errors #Programming #Reborn

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

#Progress #Language #Programming

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

#Nests #Parentheses #Toasts

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

#Running #Humorous #Long

Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon.
-- Alan Perlis

#Cancer #Sugar #Causes

One can't proceed from the informal to the formal by formal means.
-- Alan Perlis

#Mean #Formal

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

#Mean #Computing

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

#Mean #Machines #Fit

One man's constant is another man's variable.
-- Alan Perlis

#Men #Variables #Constant

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

#Learning #Machines #Program

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.
-- Alan Perlis

#Writing #Learning #Thinking

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.
-- Alan Perlis

#Swag #Swagger

There is no such thing as a free variable.
-- Alan Perlis

#Variables

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

#Learning #Thinking #Language

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.
-- Alan Perlis

#Fun #Philosophy #Bittersweet

Computer Science is embarrassed by the computer.
-- Alan Perlis

#Computer #Computer Science #Embarrassed

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

#Program #Explaining

C programmers never die. They are just cast into void.
-- Alan Perlis

#Void #Casts

Optimization hinders evolution.
-- Alan Perlis

#Learning #Evolution #Programming