Quotes from Alan Perlis

The computing field is always in need of new cliches.

Some programming languages manage to absorb change, but withstand progress.

Because of its vitality, the computing field is always in desperate need of new cliches: Banality soothes our nerves.

The best book on programming for the layman is 'Alice in Wonderland'; but that's because it's the best book on anything for the layman.

In computing, turning the obvious into the useful is a living definition of the word 'frustration'.

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

Optimization hinders evolution. Everything should be built top-down, except the first time. Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.

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

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

In software systems it is often the early bird that makes the worm.

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.

It is better to have 100 functions operate on one data structure than to have 10 functions operate on 10 data structures.

A programming language is low level when its programs require attention to the irrelevant.

Every program has two purposes: The one for which it was written and another for which it wasn't.

Is it possible that software is not like anything else, that it is meant to be discarded: that the whole point is to always see it as a soap bubble?

If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some.

One man's constant is another man's variable.

In man-machine symbiosis, it is man who must adjust: The machines can't.

Motto for a research laboratory: what we work on today, others will first think of tomorrow.

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

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

If your computer speaks English, it was probably made in Japan.

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

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