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We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil.

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
Programming
Root
Roots
Efficiencies
Learning
Optimization
Small
Debugging
Forget
Premature
Evil
Programmers
Time
Efficiency

More quotes by Donald Knuth

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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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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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Science is what we understand well enough to explain to a computer. Art is everything else we do.
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There's ways to amuse yourself while doing things and thats how I look at efficency.
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How can you own numbers? Numbers belong to the world.
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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 designer of a new kind of system must participate fully in the implementation.
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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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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.
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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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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.
Donald Knuth
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Beware of bugs in the above code I have only proved it correct, not tried it.
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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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A mathematical formula should never be owned by anybody! Mathematics belong to God.
Donald Knuth
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A list is only as strong as its weakest link.
Donald Knuth
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The best practice is inspired by theory.
Donald Knuth
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Programming is legitimate and necessary academic endeavour.
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.
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TeX has found at least one bug in every Pascal compiler it's been run on, I think, and at least two in every C compiler
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