Alan Perlis: Epigrams on Programming (1982) [pdf] | Hacker News Reader

Alan Perlis: Epigrams on Programming (1982) [pdf]

gwern.net

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Alan Perlis's own page listing the epigrams, in HTML for ease of readability, copying, and accessibility:

http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/perlis-alan/quotes.html

Herbert Klaeren's list, which includes some meta-epigrams:

http://pu.inf.uni-tuebingen.de/users/klaeren/epigrams.html

Interesting that the Yale website omits the last 10

It also has some subtle transcription errors, which is why I got a copy of the original to host & link instead. For example, I forget which, unfortunately, but one of the later ones makes zero sense in the HTML version, because it's based on some wordplay and the transcriber got a word wrong. (I always thought I was simply not getting it, until I got the original and rereading, realized that the problem wasn't me.)

#116 on the Yale Website:

> You think you know when you can learn, are more sure when you can write, even more when you can teach, but certain when you can program.

in the scanned original:

> You think you know when you learn, are more sure when you can write, even more when you can teach, but certain when you can program.

That might be it, yes.

re copying: I am quite impressed with how far Chrome's pdf viewer is by now: selection and copying of text works. I wonder when this was added.

> Adapting old programs to fit new machines usually means adapting new machines to behave like old ones.

Made me think about backwards compatibility. Backwards compatibility often is what allows a new platform to be successful (or to have a shot at success) and yet it can hold it back from what it would have become without it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path_dependence

Related a recent comment by munificent on all the effort that goes into JavaScript runtimes:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20413090

A dozen threads but no real big ones: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=epigrams%20programming%20comme...

A favorite Alan Perlis quote that's not included here: "If Shakespeare were alive today, he’d be a programmer, and he’d be writing one-liners in APL."

https://www.jsoftware.com/papers/APLQA.htm

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