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.
Alan Perlis

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

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

Computer Science is embarrassed by the computer.
Alan Perlis

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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?
Alan Perlis

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.
Alan Perlis

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

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

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

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