1. Quotes
  2. Authors
  3. Alan Perlis

Alan Perlis Quotes

Alan Jay Perlis was an American computer scientist and professor at Purdue University, Carnegie Mellon University and Yale University. He is best known for his pioneering work in programming languages and was the first recipient of the Turing Award. Wikipedia  

✵ 1. April 1922 – 7. February 1990  •  Other names Жан де Лабрюйер, Алан Джей Перлис

Works

Alan Perlis: 30 quotes1 like

Famous Alan Perlis Quotes

“The vision we have of conversational programming takes in much more than rapid turn around time and convenient debugging aids: our most interesting programs are never wrong and never final. […] What is new is the requirement to make variable in our languages what we had previously taken as fixed. I do not refer to new data classes now, but to variables whose values are programs or parts of programs, syntax or parts of syntax, and regimes of control.”

Alan Perlis

The Synthesis of Algorithmic Systems, 1966

“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

The Synthesis of Algorithmic Systems, 1966

“19: A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing.”

Alan Perlis Epigrams on Programming

Epigrams on Programming, 1982

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

Alan Perlis Epigrams on Programming

Epigrams on Programming, 1982

“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. Above all, I hope we don't become missionaries. Don't feel as if you're Bible salesmen. The world has too many of those already. What you know about computing other people will learn. Don't feel as if the key to successful computing is only in your hands. What's in your hands, I think and hope, is intelligence: the ability to see the machine as more than when you were first led up to it, that you can make it more.”

Alan Perlis

Quoted in The Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs by Hal Abelson, Gerald Jay Sussman and Julie Sussman (McGraw-Hill, 2nd edition, 1996).

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

Alan Perlis

The Synthesis of Algorithmic Systems, 1966

Alan Perlis Quotes

“58: Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.”

Alan Perlis Epigrams on Programming

Epigrams on Programming, 1982

“64: Often it is means that justify ends: Goals advance technique and technique survives even when goal structures crumble.”

Alan Perlis Epigrams on Programming

Epigrams on Programming, 1982

“57: It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice versa.”

Alan Perlis Epigrams on Programming

Epigrams on Programming, 1982

“75: The computing field is always in need of new cliches: Banality sooths our nerves.”

Alan Perlis Epigrams on Programming

Epigrams on Programming, 1982

“11: If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some.”

Alan Perlis Epigrams on Programming

Epigrams on Programming, 1982

“Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semi-colons.”

Alan Perlis Epigrams on Programming

Epigrams on Programming, 1982

“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.”

Alan Perlis Epigrams on Programming

Epigrams on Programming, 1982

“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.”

Alan Perlis Epigrams on Programming

Epigrams on Programming, 1982

“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?”

Alan Perlis Epigrams on Programming

Epigrams on Programming, 1982

“80: Prolonged contact with the computer turns mathematicians into clerks and vice versa.”

Alan Perlis Epigrams on Programming

Epigrams on Programming, 1982

“8: A programming language is low level when its programs require attention to the irrelevant.”

Alan Perlis Epigrams on Programming

Epigrams on Programming, 1982

“55: LISP programmers know the value of everything and the cost of nothing.”

Alan Perlis Epigrams on Programming

Epigrams on Programming, 1982

“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

The Synthesis of Algorithmic Systems, 1966

“79: A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.”

Alan Perlis Epigrams on Programming

Epigrams on Programming, 1982

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

Alan Perlis

The Synthesis of Algorithmic Systems, 1966

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

Alan Perlis Epigrams on Programming

Epigrams on Programming, 1982

“1: One man's constant is another man's variable.”

Alan Perlis Epigrams on Programming

Epigrams on Programming, 1982

“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.”

Alan Perlis Epigrams on Programming

Epigrams on Programming, 1982

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

Alan Perlis Epigrams on Programming

Epigrams on Programming, 1982

“41: Some programming languages manage to absorb change, but withstand progress.”

Alan Perlis Epigrams on Programming

Epigrams on Programming, 1982

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

Alan Perlis Epigrams on Programming

Epigrams on Programming, 1982

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

Alan Perlis

The Synthesis of Algorithmic Systems, 1966

“We toast the Lisp programmer who pens his thoughts within nests of parentheses.”

Alan Perlis

Quoted in The Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs.

Similar authors

Herbert A. Simon photo
Herbert A. Simon58
American political scientist, economist, sociologist, and p… None
Martin Lewis Perl photo
Martin Lewis Perl9
American scientist None
Steve Jobs photo
Steve Jobs150
American entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple Inc. None
Jerome Isaac Friedman photo
Jerome Isaac Friedman6
American physicist None
Richard Feynman photo
Richard Feynman181
American theoretical physicist None
Hans Bethe photo
Hans Bethe2
German-American nuclear physicist None
Bill Gates photo
Bill Gates92
American business magnate and philanthropist None
Robert A. Heinlein photo
Robert A. Heinlein557
American science fiction author None
Reinhold Niebuhr photo
Reinhold Niebuhr65
American protestant theologian None
Douglas Adams photo
Douglas Adams317
English writer and humorist None