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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

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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.
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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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It would be nice if we could design a virtual reality in Hyperbolic Space, and meet each other there.
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A list is only as strong as its weakest link.
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I've never been a good estimator of how long things are going to take.
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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 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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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.
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I remember that mathematicians were telling me in the 1960s that they would recognize computer science as a mature discipline when it had 1,000 deep algorithms. I think we've probably reached 500.
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An algorithm must be seen to be believed.
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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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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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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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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 define UNIX as 30 definitions of regular expressions living under one roof.
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I'm obsessively detail-oriented.
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It is much more rewarding to do more with less.
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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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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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