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珀里斯语录（1982）登上 Hacker News 热门
2026-06-15 11:26·17天前·tosh
AI 摘要1982 年 Alan Perlis 的计算机科学格言集《珀里斯语录》（Perlisisms）于 6 月 14 日登上 Hacker News 热门，获得 100 个点赞。
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EPIGRAMS IN PROGRAMMING
- One man's constant is another man's variable.
- Functions delay binding; data structures induce binding. Moral: Structure data late in the programming process.
- Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon.
- Every program is a part of some other program and rarely fits.
- If a program manipulates a large amount of data, it does so in a small number of ways.
- Symmetry is a complexity-reducing concept (co-routines include subroutines); seek it everywhere.
- It is easier to write an incorrect program than understand a correct one.
- A programming language is low level when its programs require attention to the irrelevant.
- It is better to have 100 functions operate on one data structure than 10 functions on 10 data structures.
- Get into a rut early: Do the same process the same way. Accumulate idioms. Standardize. The only difference(!) between Shakespeare and you was the size of his idiom list - not the size of his vocabulary.
- If you have a procedure with ten parameters, you probably missed some.
- Recursion is the root of computation since it trades description for time.
- If two people write exactly the same program, each should be put into microcode and then they certainly won't be the same.
- In the long run every program becomes rococo - then rubble.
- Everything should be built top-down, except the first time.
- Every program has (at least) two purposes: the one for which it was written, and another for which it wasn't.
- If a listener nods his head when you're explaining your program, wake him up.
- A program without a loop and a structured variable isn't worth writing.
- A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing.
- Wherever there is modularity there is the potential for misunderstanding: Hiding information implies a need to check communication.
- Optimization hinders evolution.
- A good system can't have a weak command language.
- To understand a program you must become both the machine and the program.
- Perhaps if we wrote programs from childhood on, as adults we'd be able to read them.
- One can only display complex information in the mind. Like seeing, movement or flow or alteration of view is more important than the static picture, no matter how lovely.