艾倫·佩利
第一屆圖靈獎得主
Over the centuries the Indians developed sign language for communicating phenomena of interest. Programmers from different tribes (FORTRAN, LISP, ALGOL, SNOBOL, etc.) could use one that doesn't require them to carry a blackboard on their ponies.
In a 5 year period we get one superb programming language. Only we can't control when the 5 year period will be.
If we believe in data structures, we must believe in independent (hence simultaneous) processing. For why else would we collect items within a structure? Why do we tolerate languages that give us the one without the other?
Think of all the psychic energy expended in seeking a fundamental distinction between "algorithm" and "program".
Making something variable is easy. Controlling duration of constancy is the trick.
Make no mistake about it: Computers process numbers - not symbols. We measure our understanding (and control) by the extent to which we can arithmetize an activity.
Often it is the means that justify the ends: Goals advance technique and technique survives even when goal structures crumble.
When we write programs that "learn", it turns out that we do and they don't.
In computing, invariants are ephemeral.
In programming, as in everything else, to be in error is to be reborn.
In seeking the unattainable, simplicity only gets in the way.
In English every word can be verbed. Would that it were so in our programming languages.
Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.
It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice versa.
Software is under a constant tension. Being symbolic it is arbitrarily perfectible; but also it is arbitrarily changeable.
A LISP programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of nothing.
Beware of the Turing tar-pit in which everything is possible but nothing of interest is easy.
So many good ideas are never heard from again once they embark in a voyage on the semantic gulf.
Systems have sub-systems and sub-systems have sub- systems and so on ad infinitum - which is why we're always starting over.
Bringing computers into the home won't change either one, but may revitalize the corner saloon.