Alan Perlis Quotes, born April 1, 1922, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and passing on February 7, 1990, was an American computer scientist and professor at Purdue, Carnegie Mellon, and Yale Universities. Renowned for his pioneering work in programming languages, he was the first recipient of the Turing Award in 1966. His article Epigrams on Programming (1982), published in ACM SIGPLAN Notices, distilled decades of wisdom into witty, incisive one-liners that remain influential in computer science. These 15 quotes—sourced from Epigrams on Programming, interviews, and posts on X—reflect his insights on programming, complexity, creativity, and the ethos of computing, capturing his sharp intellect and playful spirit.
15 Alan Perlis Quotes
- “Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.” (Epigrams on Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Notices, 1982)
- “A language that doesn’t affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.” (Epigrams on Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Notices, 1982)
- “There are two ways to write error-free programs; only the third one works.” (Epigrams on Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Notices, 1982)
- “Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.” (Epigrams on Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Notices, 1982)
- “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.” (Epigrams on Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Notices, 1982)
- “A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.” (Quotes.net, n.d.)
- “If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some.” (Epigrams on Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Notices, 1982)
- “In computing, turning the obvious into the useful is a living definition of the word ‘frustration’.” (Epigrams on Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Notices, 1982)
- “I think that it’s extraordinarily important that we in computer science keep fun in computing.” (The Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, 1996)
- “A programming language is low level when its programs require attention to the irrelevant.” (Epigrams on Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Notices, 1982)
- “It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice versa.” (Epigrams on Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Notices, 1982)
- “We toast the Lisp programmer who pens his thoughts within nests of parentheses.” (Epigrams on Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Notices, 1982)
- “When someone says, ‘I want a programming language in which I need only say what I want done,’ give him a lollipop.” (Epigrams on Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Notices, 1982)
- “You can measure a programmer’s perspective by noting his attitude on the continuing vitality of FORTRAN.” (Epigrams on Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Notices, 1982)
- “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?” (Epigrams on Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Notices, 1982)
Alan Perlis’s quotes are a brilliant mix of wit, technical insight, and philosophical depth, inspiring programmers to embrace simplicity, creativity, and the joy of computing. Which quote sparks your coding passion? Drop it in the comments and keep Perlis’s visionary legacy alive!
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