Quote

The sun comes up just about as often as it goes down, in the long run, but this doesn't make its motion random.

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
Sun
Goes
Often
Comes
Running
Doesn
Long
Random
Make
Motion

More quotes by Donald Knuth

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I define UNIX as 30 definitions of regular expressions living under one roof.
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The best practice is inspired by theory.
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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.
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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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Science is what we understand well enough to explain to a computer. Art is everything else we 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.
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Beware of bugs in the above code I have only proved it correct, not tried it.
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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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I'm obsessively detail-oriented.
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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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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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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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An algorithm must be seen to be believed.
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The best theory is inspired by practice.
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Programming is legitimate and necessary academic endeavour.
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There's ways to amuse yourself while doing things and thats how I look at efficency.
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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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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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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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