Quote

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

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Donald Knuth
Age: 86
Born: 1938
Born: January 10
Academic
Computer Scientist
Engineer
Historian Of Mathematics
Mathematician
Programmer
University Teacher
Writer
Milwaukee City
Wisconsin
Donald E. Knuth
Don Knuth
Donald Ervin Knuth
D.E.K.
DEK
Knuth
Change
Tasks
Programs
Human
Program
Construction
Humans
Computer
Programming
Beings
Software
Instead
Task
Instruct
Attitude
Simplicity
Imagining
Learning
Main
Explaining
Rather
Traditional
Concentrate

More quotes by Donald Knuth

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My general working style is to write everything first with pencil and paper, sitting beside a big wastebasket. Then I use Emacs to enter the text into my machine.
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A list is only as strong as its weakest link.
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If you find that you're spending almost all your time on theory, start turning some attention to practical things it will improve your theories. If you find that you're spending almost all your time on practice, start turning some attention to theoretical things it will improve your practice.
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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
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I can’t go to a restaurant and order food because I keep looking at the fonts on the menu.
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I'm obsessively detail-oriented.
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Everyday life is like programming, I guess. If you love something you can put beauty into it.
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My first program taught me a lot about the errors that I was going to be making in the future, and also about how to find errors. That's sort of the story of my life, making errors and trying to recover from them. I try to get things correct. I probably obsess about not making too many mistakes.
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The best practice is inspired by theory.
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Any inaccuracies in this index may be explained by the fact that it has been prepared with the help of a computer.
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Meta-design is much more difficult than design it's easier to draw something than to explain how to draw it.
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The enjoyment of one's tools is an essential ingredient of successful work.
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A mathematical formula should never be owned by anybody! Mathematics belong to God.
Donald Knuth
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There's ways to amuse yourself while doing things and thats how I look at efficency.
Donald Knuth
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It would be nice if we could design a virtual reality in Hyperbolic Space, and meet each other there.
Donald Knuth
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I define UNIX as 30 definitions of regular expressions living under one roof.
Donald Knuth
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Computers are good at following instructions, but not at reading your mind.
Donald Knuth
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We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil.
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We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil. Yet we should not pass up our opportunities in that critical 3%
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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.
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