艾倫·佩利
第一屆圖靈獎得主
When we understand knowledge-based systems, it will be as before -- except our fingertips will have been singed.
Giving up on assembly language was the apple in our Garden of Eden: Languages whose use squanders machine cycles are sinful. The LISP machine now permits LISP programmers to abandon bra and fig-leaf.
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.
As Will Rogers would have said, "There is no such thing as a free variable."
Like punning, programming is a play on words.
The goal of computation is the emulation of our synthetic abilities, not the understanding of our analytic ones.
44.Sometimes I think the only universal in the computing field is the fetch-execute cycle.
In software systems, it is often the early bird that makes the worm.
You can measure a programmer's perspective by noting his attitude on the continuing vitality of FORTRAN.
Some programming languages manage to absorb change, but withstand progress.
There are two ways to write error-free programs; only the third one works.
Re graphics: 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.
Structured Programming supports the law of the excluded middle.
The most important computer is the one that rages in our skulls and ever seeks that satisfactory external emulator. The standarization of real computers would be a disaster - and so it probably won't happen.
The use of a program to prove the 4-color theorem will not change mathematics - it merely demonstrates that the theorem, a challenge for a century, is probably not important to mathematics.
Everyone can be taught to sculpt: Michelangelo would have had to be taught not to. So it is with great programmers.
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.
The eleventh commandment was "Thou Shalt Compute" or "Thou Shalt Not Compute" - I forget which.
Programmers are not to be measured by their ingenuity and their logic but by the completeness of their case analysis.
Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.