Alan Perlis Quotes

30 Sourced Quotes

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

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

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

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

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

Alan Perlis
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.

Alan Perlis
Programmers should never be satisfied with languages which permit them to program everything, but to program nothing of interest easily.

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

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

Alan Perlis
This language [LISP] induces humorous arguments among programmers, often being damned and praised for the same feature.

Alan Perlis
Both knowledge and wisdom extend man's reach. Knowledge led to computers, wisdom to chopsticks.

Alan Perlis
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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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
Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semi-colons.

Alan Perlis