Donald Knuth Quotes and Sayings - Page 1
More Donald Knuth quote about:
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“Science is what we understand well enough to explain to a computer. Art is everything else we do.”
-- Donald Knuth -
“Everyday life is like programming, I guess. If you love something you can put beauty into it.”
-- Donald Knuth -
“The process of preparing programs for a digital computer is especially attractive, not only because it can economically and scientifically rewarding, but also because it can be an aesthetic experience much like composing poetry or music.”
-- Donald Knuth -
“Computer programming is an art, because it applies accumulated knowledge to the world, because it requires skill and ingenuity, and especially because it produces objects of beauty. A programmer who subconsciously views himself as an artist will enjoy what he does and will do it better.”
-- Donald Knuth -
“People think that computer science is the art of geniuses but the actual reality is the opposite, just many people doing things that build on each other, like a wall of mini stones.”
-- Donald Knuth -
“Computers are good at following instructions, but not at reading your mind.”
-- Donald Knuth -
“In fact what I would like to see is thousands of computer scientists let loose to do whatever they want. That's what really advances the field.”
-- Donald Knuth -
“Let us change our traditional attitude to the construction of programs. Instead of imagining that our main task is to instruct a computer what to do, let us concentrate rather on explaining to human beings what we want a computer to do.”
-- Donald Knuth -
“Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it.”
-- Donald Knuth -
“I can’t go to a restaurant and order food because I keep looking at the fonts on the menu.”
-- Donald Knuth -
“Premature optimization is the root of all evil.”
-- Donald Knuth -
“How can you own [...] numbers? Numbers belong to the world.”
-- Donald Knuth -
“People who are more than casually interested in computers should have at least some idea of what the underlying hardware is like. Otherwise the programs they write will be pretty weird.”
-- Donald Knuth -
“Random numbers should not be generated with a method chosen at random”
-- Donald Knuth -
“The sun comes up just about as often as it goes down, in the long run, but this doesn't make its motion random.”
-- Donald Knuth -
“I think people who write programs do have at least a glimmer of extra insight into the nature of God... because creating a program often means that you have to create a small universe”
-- Donald Knuth -
“We should continually be striving to transform every art into a science: in the process, we advance the art.”
-- Donald Knuth -
“For his major contributions to the analysis of algorithms and the design of programming languages, and in particular for his contributions to the "art of computer programming" through his well-known books in a continuous series by this title.”
-- Donald Knuth -
“A list is only as strong as its weakest link.”
-- Donald Knuth -
“It is much more rewarding to do more with less.”
-- Donald Knuth -
“I define UNIX as 30 definitions of regular expressions living under one roof.”
-- Donald Knuth -
“The whole thing that makes a mathematician’s life worthwhile is that he gets the grudging admiration of three or four colleagues.”
-- Donald Knuth -
“The hardest thing is to go to sleep at night, when there are so many urgent things needing to be done. A huge gap exists between what we know is possible with today's machines and what we have so far been able to finish.”
-- Donald Knuth -
“The most important thing in the programming language is the name. A language will not succeed without a good name. I have recently invented a very good name and now I am looking for a suitable language.”
-- Donald Knuth -
“I currently use Ubuntu Linux, on a standalone laptop - it has no Internet connection. I occasionally carry flash memory drives between this machine and the Macs that I use for network surfing and graphics; but I trust my family jewels only to Linux.”
-- Donald Knuth -
“The manuals we got from IBM would show examples of programs and I knew I could do a heck of a lot better than that. So I thought I might have some talent.”
-- Donald Knuth -
“The best programs are written so that computing machines can perform them quickly and so that human beings can understand them clearly. A programmer is ideally an essayist who works with traditional aesthetic and literary forms as well as mathematical concepts, to communicate the way that an algorithm works and to convince a reader that the results will be correct.”
-- Donald Knuth -
“I have a hunch that the unknown sequences of DNA will decode into copyright notices and patent protections.”
-- Donald Knuth -
“If you optimize everything, you will always be unhappy.”
-- Donald Knuth