Alan Perlis Quotes

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

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.

When someone says, "I want a programming language in which I need only say what I want done," give him a lollipop.

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

There are two ways to write error-free programs; only the third one works.

Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.

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

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

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

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