Alan Perlis Quotes

Defect-free software does not exist.

This will surprise some of your readers, but my primary interest is not with computer security. I am primarily interested in writing software that works as intended.

I think it's a combination of technical and social factors that leads to all the defects in deployed software.

All software sucks.

The process of software development doesn't feel any better than it did a generation ago.

When it comes to software, I much prefer free software, because I have very seldom seen a program that has worked well enough for my needs, and having sources available can be a life-saver.

Agitator and the Agitar Management Dashboard lower the barriers to accountability in software development and increase the value of developer testing.

There is a strong movement towards increased accountability for software developers and software development organizations.

I started working on OpenBSD, and many earlier projects, because I have always felt that vendor systems were not designed for quality.

When I write software, I know that it will fail, either due to my own mistake, or due to some other cause.

Most software today is very much like an Egyptian pyramid with millions of bricks piled on top of each other, with no structural integrity, but just done by brute force and thousands of slaves.

The reality of most software development is that the consequences of failure are simply nonexistent.

Developer testing is an important step towards accountability. It gives developers a way to demonstrate the quality of the software they produce.

In the practical world of computing, it is rather uncommon that a program, once it performs correctly and satisfactorily, remains unchanged forever.

My duty as a teacher is to train, educate future programmers.

Yet, I am convinced that there is a need for high quality software, and the time will come when it will be recognized that it is worth investing effort in its development and in using a careful, structured approach based on safe, structured languages.

I'm not saying we purposely introduced bugs or anything, but this is kind of a natural result of any complexities of software... that you can't fully test it.

I took Pascal, and I was terrible. And then, when I went to NYU, I minored in computer science. I just couldn't code. I just didn't have the patience for it.

I didn't do programming language stuff in college at all.

You can learn how to code today. You can build this same thing that you're looking at every day, that you're tweeting on, that you're snapping on, and I feel like that conversation needs to be had.

For us, the real goal is to make it so that the software ecosystem is as healthy as possible.

As technologists, we all write code.

At first I hoped that such a technically unsound project would collapse but I soon realized it was doomed to success. Almost anything in software can be implemented, sold, and even used given enough determination. There is nothing a mere scientist can say that will stand against the flood of a hundred million dollars. But there is one quality that cannot be purchased in this way - and that is reliability. The price of reliability is the pursuit of the utmost simplicity. It is a price which the very rich find most hard to pay.

C is a razor-sharp tool, with which one can create an elegant and efficient program or a bloody mess.

If you're as clever as you can be when you write it, how will you ever debug it?