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Alan Perlis Quotes
1922–1990 United States
Alan Jay Perlis (April 1, 1922 – February 7, 1990) was an American computer scientist known for his pioneering work in programming languages, most notably as a member of the team that developed the ALGOL programming language. He was the first recipient of the prestigious ACM Turing Award .
United States Computer scientists Educators Scientists Also known as: Perlis, Alan
Random Alan Perlis quote
40 quotes
57: It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice versa.
41: Some programming languages manage to absorb change, but withstand progress.
64: Often it is means that justify ends: Goals advance technique and technique survives even when goal structures crumble.
11: If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some.
31: Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.
3: Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semi-colons.
1: One man's constant is another man's variable.
Both knowledge and wisdom extend man's reach. Knowledge led to computers, wisdom to chopsticks.
59: In English every word can be verbed. Would that it were so in our programming languages.
16: Every program has (at least) two purposes: the one for which it was written and another for which it wasn't.
80: Prolonged contact with the computer turns mathematicians into clerks and vice versa.
This language [LISP] induces humorous arguments among programmers, often being damned and praised for the same feature.
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.
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.
Computer science is a restless infant and its progress depends as much on shifts in point of view as on the orderly development of our current concepts.
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.
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?
58: Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.
There is an appreciated substance to the phrase "ALGOL-like" which is often used in arguments about programming, languages and computation. ALGOL appears to be a durable model, and even flourishes under surgery — be it explorative, plastic, or amputative.
Pascal is for building pyramids -- imposing, breathtaking, static structures built by armies pushing heavy blocks into place. Lisp is for building organisms -- imposing, breathtaking, dynamic structures built by squads fitting fluctuating myriads of simpler organisms into place.
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