Alan Perlis

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

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

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

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?

The computing field is always in need of new cliches.

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

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

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

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.

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

You can measure a programmer’s perspective by noting his attitude on the continuing vitality of FORTRAN.

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

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

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.

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

It is easier to write an incorrect program than understand a correct one.

Computer Science is embarrassed by the computer.

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

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

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

If a listener nods his head when you’re explaining your program, wake him up.

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

I think it is inevitable that people program poorly. Training will not substantially help matters. We have to learn to live with it.

Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.

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.

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

A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.