Alan Perlis's Quotes

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

Computer Science is embarrassed by the computer.

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

Every program has 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.

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

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

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?

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

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

LISP programmers know the value of everything and the cost of nothing.

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

Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.

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

The computing field is always in need of new cliches.

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