Alan Perlis Quotes
Collection of top 53 famous quotes about Alan Perlis
Alan Perlis Quotes & Sayings
Happy to read and share the best inspirational Alan Perlis quotes, sayings and quotations on Wise Famous Quotes.
FORTRAN is not a flower but a weed - it is hardy, occasionally blooms, and grows in every computer.
— Alan Perlis
In English every word can be verbed. Would that it were so in our programming languages.
— Alan Perlis
Every program has two purposes: The one for which it was written and another for which it wasn't.
— Alan Perlis
In English every word can be verbed.
— Alan Perlis
One does not learn computing by using a hand calculator, but one can forget arithmetic. Perlis 1982
— Alan J. Perlis
Computer Science is embarrassed by the computer.
— Alan Perlis
The string is a stark data structure and everywhere it is passed there is much duplication of process. It is a perfect vehicle for hiding information.
— Alan J. Perlis
Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.
— Alan Perlis
A programming language is low level when its programs require attention to the irrelevant.
— Alan Perlis
Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.
— Alan Perlis
Learning French is trivial: the word for horse is cheval, and everything else follows in the same way.
— Alan Perlis
Adapting old programs to fit new machines usually means adapting new machines to behave like old ones.
— Alan Perlis
Motto for a research laboratory: what we work on today, others will first think of tomorrow.
— Alan Perlis
One man's constant is another man's variable.
— Alan Perlis
There is no such thing as a free variable.
— Alan Perlis
Programmers are not to be measured by their ingenuity and their logic but by the completeness of their case analysis.
— Alan Perlis
Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon.
— Alan Perlis
The computing field is always in need of new cliches.
— Alan Perlis
In computing, turning the obvious into the useful is a living definition of the word 'frustration'.
— Alan Perlis
A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
— Alan Perlis
You can measure a programmer's perspective by noting his attitude on the continuing vitality of FORTRAN.
— Alan Perlis
Any noun can be verbed.
— 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
Often it is the means that justify the ends: goals advance technique and technique survives even when goal structures crumble.
— Alan Perlis
When a professor insists computer science is X but not Y, have compassion for his graduate students.
— Alan Perlis
C programmers never die. They are just cast into void.
— Alan Perlis
