“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

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The vision we have of conversational programming takes in much more than rapid turn around time and convenient debuggin…" by Alan Perlis?
Alan Perlis photo
Alan Perlis 30
American computer scientist 1922–1990

Related quotes

John F. Kennedy photo

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

Alan Perlis (1922–1990) American computer scientist

The Synthesis of Algorithmic Systems, 1966

Fred Brooks photo
Niklaus Wirth photo

“But active programming consists of the design of new programs, rather than contemplation of old programs.”

Niklaus Wirth (1934) Swiss computer scientist

Program Development by Stepwise Refinement (1971)

Richard Stallman photo

“My favorite programming languages are Lisp and C. However, since around 1992 I have worked mainly on free software activism, which means I am too busy to do much programming. Around 2008 I stopped doing programming projects.”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

How I do my computing (2006) http://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html
2000s

Warren Farrell photo
Benito Mussolini photo

“The Socialists ask what is our program? Our program is to smash the heads of the Socialists.”

Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) Duce and President of the Council of Ministers of Italy. Leader of the National Fascist Party and subsequen…

Article in Popolo d'Italia, quoted in "A History of Terrorism" (2001) by Walter Laqueur, p. 71
Undated

Richard Stallman photo

“The hard part of programming is the same regardless of the language.”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

"You broke the Internet. We're making ourselves a GNU one." (August 2013) https://gnunet.org/internetistschuld (around 02:16)
2010s
Context: Programming is programming. If you get good at programming, it doesn't matter which language you learned it in, because you'll be able to do programming in any language. The hard part of programming is the same regardless of the language. And if you have a talent for that, and you learned it here, you can take it over there. Oh, one thing: if you want to get a picture of a programming at its most powerful, you should learn Lisp or Scheme because they are more elegant and powerful than other languages.

Ram Dass photo

“Suffering is part of our training program for becoming wise.”

Ram Dass (1931–2019) American contemporary spiritual teacher and the author of the 1971 book Be Here Now

Related topics