A Quote by Alan Perlis

A LISP programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of nothing.

Alan Perlis

Quote Topics

Cost Everything Knows Lisp Nothing Programmer Value

Quote Author

Alan Perlis
American - Scientist
April 1, 1922 - February 7, 1990

LISP programmers know the value of everything and the cost of nothing.

Alan Perlis

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

What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. And a sentimentalist, my dear Darlington, is a man who sees an absurd value in everything, and doesn't know the market place of any single thing.

Oscar Wilde

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

Alan Perlis

People value religion on the basis of cost, and they don't value the cheapest ones the most. Religions that ask nothing get nothing.

Rodney Stark

What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

Oscar Wilde

Most of these charges that people pay are economically unnecessary. There's no real cost behind them. There's no real value behind them. So, they're what the classical economist called empty pricing. Prices with no real cost value. What they called rent and fictitious capital. Capital claims on junk mortgage borrowers. The pretense is that all these debts can be paid but it's all fictitious, because everybody knows - at least on Wall Street everybody knows - that many debts can't be paid.

Michael Hudson

Nothing that has value, real value, has no cost. Not freedom, not food, not shelter, not healthcare.

Dean Kamen

Nothing gained without cost is valued. Freedom has a cost, and all will bear it so all will value and preserve it.

Terry Goodkind

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

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

No one knows the cost of a defective product - don't tell me you do. You know the cost of replacing it, but not the cost of a dissatisfied customer.

W. Edwards Deming

Forgiveness is a gift of high value. Yet its cost is nothing.

Betty Smith

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.