Quote

The psychological profiling [of a programmer] is mostly the ability to shift levels of abstraction, from low level to high level. To see something in the small and to see something in the large.

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
Large
Profiling
Level
Programmer
Levels
Programmers
Small
Abstraction
High
Shift
Ability
Mostly
Something
Psychological
Lows

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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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I've never been a good estimator of how long things are going to take.
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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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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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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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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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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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The designer of a new kind of system must participate fully in the implementation.
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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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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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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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I can’t go to a restaurant and order food because I keep looking at the fonts on the menu.
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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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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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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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I'm obsessively detail-oriented.
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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 have a hunch that the unknown sequences of DNA will decode into copyright notices and patent protections.
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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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The best theory is inspired by practice.
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