艾倫·佩利
第一屆圖靈獎得主
One does not learn computing by using a hand calculator, but one can forget arithmetic.
It is not the computer's fault that Maxwell's equations are not adequate to design the electric motor.
We have the mini and the micro computer. In what semantic niche would the pico computer fall?
We kid ourselves if we think that the ratio of procedure to data in an active data-base system can be made arbitrarily small or even kept small.
Though the Chinese should adore APL, it's FORTRAN they put their money on.
Motto for a research laboratory: What we work on today, others will first think of tomorrow.
What is the difference between a Turing machine and the modern computer? It's the same as that between Hillary's ascent of Everest and the establishment of a Hilton hotel on its peak.
We are on the verge: Today our program proved Fermat's next-to-last theorem.
In computing, turning the obvious into the useful is a living definition of the word "frustration".
Prolonged contact with the computer turns mathematicians into clerks and vice versa.
A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
If your computer speaks English, it was probably made in Japan.
The cybernetic exchange between man, computer and algorithm is like a game of musical chairs: The frantic search for balance always leaves one of the three standing ill at ease.
It is the user who should parameterize procedures, not their creators.
Because of its vitality, the computing field is always in desperate need of new cliches: Banality soothes our nerves.
Is it possible that software is not like anything else, that it is meant to be discarded: that the whole point is to see it as a soap bubble?
It is not a language's weakness but its strengths that control the gradient of its change: Alas, a language never escapes its embryonic sac.
An adequate bootstrap is a contradiction in terms.
Documentation is like term insurance: It satisfies because almost no one who subscribes to it depends on its benefits.