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
Beings
Software
Instead
Task
Instruct
Attitude
Simplicity
Imagining
Learning
Main
Explaining
Rather
Traditional
Concentrate
Change
Tasks
Programs
Human
Program
Construction
Humans
Computer
Programming

More quotes by Donald Knuth

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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.
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I've never been a good estimator of how long things are going to take.
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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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Science is knowledge which we understand so well that we can teach it to a computer and if we don't fully understand something, it is an art to deal with it.
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The sun comes up just about as often as it goes down, in the long run, but this doesn't make its motion random.
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The designer of a new kind of system must participate fully in the implementation.
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I try to learn certain areas of computer science exhaustively then I try to digest that knowledge into a form that is accessible to people who don't have time for such study.
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I decry the current tendency to seek patents on algorithms. There are better ways to earn a living than to prevent other people from making use of one's contributions to computer science.
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Programming is legitimate and necessary academic endeavour.
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Science is what we understand well enough to explain to a computer. Art is everything else we do.
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By understanding a machine-oriented language, the programmer will tend to use a much more efficient method it is much closer to reality.
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I define UNIX as 30 definitions of regular expressions living under one roof.
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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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The best theory is inspired by practice.
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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.
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AI has by now succeeded in doing essentially everything that requires 'thinking' but has failed to do most of what people and animals do 'without thinking'-that, somehow, is much harder.
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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.
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In fact, my main conclusion after spending ten years of my life working on the TEX project is that software is hard. It's harder than anything else I've ever had to do.
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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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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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