Lisp Quotes

• Programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute.

  Hal Abelson

  Trust, Technology, People

  "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs" by Gerald Jay Sussman and Hal Abelson, (Preface to the first edition), 1979.

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• Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon.

  Alan Perlis

  Cancer, Sugar, Causes

  "Epigrams on Programming". ACM SIGPLAN Notices 17 (9), pp. 7-13, pu.inf.uni-tuebingen.de. September 1982.

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• Lisp was far more powerful and flexible than any other language of its day; in fact, it is still a better design than most languages of today, twenty-five years later. Lisp freed ITS's hackers to think in unusual and creative ways. It was a major factor in their successes, and remains one of hackerdom's favorite languages.

  Eric S. Raymond

  Powerful, Thinking, Years

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• Lisp is still #1 for key algorithmic techniques such as recursion and condescension.

  Verity Stob

  Keys, Technique, Condescension And

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• You Jig, you amble, and you lisp.

  William Shakespeare

  Dance, Dancing, Hamlet And Ophelia

  William Shakespeare (2001). “Hamlet”, p.220, Classic Books Company

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• Lisp isn't a language, it's a building material.

  Alan Kay

  Language, Building, Programming

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• Take Lisp, you know its the most beautiful language in the world -- at least up until Haskell came along.

  Larry Wall

  Beautiful, World, Language

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• Anyone could learn Lisp in one day, except that if they already knew Fortran, it would take three days.

  Marvin Minsky

  One Day, Three, Ifs

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• Lisp doesn't look any deader than usual to me.

  David Thornley

  Usual, Looks

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• That's why the smartest companies use Common Lisp, but lie about it so all their competitors think Lisp is slow and C++ is fast.

  Erik Naggum

  Lying, Thinking, Use

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• One of the most important and fascinating of all computer languages is Lisp (standing for "List Processing"), which was invented by John McCarthy around the time Algol was invented.

  Douglas Hofstadter

  Important, Lists, Language

  "Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid". Book by Douglas Hofstadter, 1979.

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• Lisp is worth learning for the profound enlightenment experience you will have when you finally get it; that experience will make you a better programmer for the rest of your days, even if you never actually use Lisp itself a lot.

  Eric S. Raymond

  Profound, Enlightenment, Use

  Eric S. Raymond (2001). “The Cathedral and the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary”, Oreilly & Associates Incorporated

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• The most powerful programming language is Lisp. If you don't know Lisp (or its variant, Scheme), you don't appreciate what a powerful language is. Once you learn Lisp you will see what is missing in most other languages.

  Richard Stallman

  Trust, Powerful, Appreciate

  "How I Do My Computing". Personal Website, www.stallman.org.

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• Lisp has all the visual appeal of oatmeal with fingernail clippings mixed in.

  Larry Wall

  Oatmeal, Computer, Fingernails

  Usenet article, 1994.

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• Greenspun's Tenth Rule of Programming: any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad hoc informally-specified bug-ridden slow implementation of half of Common Lisp.

  Philip Greenspun

  Half, Bugs, Common

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• SQL, Lisp, and Haskell are the only programming languages that I've seen where one spends more time thinking than typing.

  Philip Greenspun

  Thinking, Language, Haskell

  "How long is the average Internet discussion forum posting?". Philip Greenspun's Weblog, blogs.harvard.edu. March 7, 2005.

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• Lisp ... made me aware that software could be close to executable mathematics.

  L Peter Deutsch

  Mathematics, Made, Software

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• The problem with Maigret is he hasn't got a limp, and he hasn't got a lisp, and he hasn't got a French accent, or a particular love of opera... or all those other things that people tend to attach to many fictional detectives. He's just an ordinary guy doing an extraordinary job, in a very interesting time.

  Rowan Atkinson

  Jobs, People, Interesting

  Source: news.tvguide.co.uk

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• This does not mean that I fail to recognise that Lisp is still #1 for key algorithmic techniques such as recursion and condescension. It just means that I have no idea how, or indeed if, Lisp handles exceptions.

  Verity Stob

  Mean, Keys, Ideas

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• If you want to know why Lisp doesn't win around you, find a mirror.

  Erik Naggum

  Winning, Mirrors, Want

  Re: Java is really convenient. Re: Sun thinks about switching Java to S-expression syntax: Lava (Usenet article), groups.google.com. February 20, 1999.

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• Don't worry about what anybody else is going to do. The best way to predict the future is to invent it.

  Alan Kay

  Worry, Investing, Way

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• [Emacs] is written in Lisp, which is the only computer language that is beautiful.

  Neal Stephenson

  Beautiful, Language, Computer

  "In the Beginning... Was the Command Line". Essay by Neal Stephenson, 1999.

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• We toast the Lisp programmer who pens his thoughts within nests of parentheses.

  Alan Perlis

  Nests, Ballpoint Pens, Parentheses

  "The Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs". Textbook by Gerald Jay Sussman and Hal Abelson, 2nd edition, 1996.

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• ...instead of offering me a Garibaldi biscuit, she asked me with that faint lisp of hers, to 'have some squashed flies, George'.

  H. G. Wells

  Food, Offering, Biscuits

  H. G. Wells (2016). “Tono-Bungay”, p.250, H. G. Wells

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• LISP has jokingly been described as "the most intelligent way to misuse a computer." I think that description is a great compliment because it transmits the full flavour of liberation: it has assisted a number of our most gifted fellow humans in thinking previously impossible thoughts.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Intelligent, Thinking, Numbers

  "The Humble Programmer". Edsger Dijkstra's ACM Turing Award lecture, "Communications of the ACM", Volume 15, No. 10, www.cs.utexas.edu. October 1972.

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