Alan Perlis Quotes

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

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

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?

One can't proceed from the informal to the formal by formal means.

A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.

One can only display complex information in the mind. Like seeing, movement or flow or alteration of view is more important than the static picture, no matter how lovely.

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

Computer Science is embarrassed by the computer.