A good programming language is a conceptual universe for thinking about programming.
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.
We are on the verge: Today our program proved Fermat’s next-to-last theorem.
Optimization hinders evolution. Everything should be built top-down, except the first time. Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.
When a professor insists computer science is X but not Y, have compassion for his graduate students.
Often it is the means that justify the ends: goals advance technique and technique survives even when goal structures crumble.
We toast the Lisp programmer who pens his thoughts within nests of parentheses.
Some programming languages manage to absorb change, but withstand progress.
There is no such thing as a free variable.
Every reader should ask himself periodically “Toward what end, toward what end?” – but do not ask it too often lest you pass up the fun of programming for the constipation of bittersweet philosophy.
Computer Science is embarrassed by the computer.
If a listener nods his head when you’re explaining your program, wake him up.
C programmers never die. They are just cast into void.
Adapting old programs to fit new machines usually means adapting new machines to behave like old ones.
In computing, the mean time to failure keeps getting shorter.
In man-machine symbiosis, it is man who must adjust: The machines can’t.
In English every word can be verbed. Would that it were so in our programming languages.
In programming, as in everything else, to be in error is to be reborn.
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.
If art interprets our dreams, the computer executes them in the guise of programs!
One does not learn computing by using a hand calculator, but one can forget arithmetic. Perlis 1982.