Epigrams on Programming

{{Short description|1982 article by Alan Perlis}}

"Epigrams on Programming" is an article by Alan Perlis published in 1982, for ACM's SIGPLAN journal. The epigrams are a series of short, programming-language-neutral, humorous statements about computers and programming, which are widely quoted.

It first appeared in SIGPLAN Notices 17(9), September 1982.

In epigram #54, Perlis coined the term "Turing tarpit", which he defined as a programming language where "everything is possible but nothing of interest is easy."

References

  • {{Cite journal | last1 = Perlis | first1 = A. J. | doi = 10.1145/947955.1083808 | title = Epigrams on programming | journal = ACM SIGPLAN Notices | publisher = Association for Computing Machinery| location = New York, NY, USA| volume = 17| issue = 9| pages = 7–13 | date=September 1982 | url = http://www-pu.informatik.uni-tuebingen.de/users/klaeren/epigrams.html| archiveurl = https://web.archive.org/web/19990117034445/http://www-pu.informatik.uni-tuebingen.de/users/klaeren/epigrams.html| archivedate = January 17, 1999| doi-access = free}}