Alan Perlis: Programming

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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?”

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

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

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

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

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