Alan Perlis Quotes & Sayings

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

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. — Alan Perlis

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In English every word can be verbed. — Alan Perlis

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

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

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

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

Any noun can be verbed. — Alan Perlis

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

Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon. — Alan Perlis

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

We are on the verge: Today our program proved Fermat's next-to-last theorem. — Alan Perlis

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

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

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

It is easier to write an incorrect program than understand a correct one. — Alan Perlis

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

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

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

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

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

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

Every program has two purposes: The one for which it was written and another for which it wasn't. — Alan Perlis

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

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

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

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

Computer Science is embarrassed by the computer. — Alan Perlis

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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