In antiquity, ProTips™ were known as epigrams. Like their modern equivalent, epigrams are highly distilled observations. Often, a subtle clue indicates that the author learned something the hard way.

Please enjoy two epigrams from Alan J. Perlis1

  • A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
  • There are two ways to write error-free programs; only the third one works.

  1. From ACM’s SIGPLAN publication, (September, 1982), Article “Epigrams in Programming”, by Alan J. Perlis of Yale University. ↩