"Alan Jay Perlis" was an United States/American computer scientist known for his pioneering work in programming languages and the first recipient of the Turing Award.

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

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

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.

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

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

You can measure a programmer's perspective by noting his attitude on the continuing viability of Fortran.

The computing field is always in need of new cliches.

Computer Science is embarrassed by the computer.

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

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

Symmetry is a complexity-reducing concept (co-routines include subroutines); seek it everywhere.

The string is a stark data structure and everywhere it is passed there is much duplication of process. It is a perfect vehicle for hiding information.