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The designer of a new kind of system must participate fully in the implementation.

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
System
Must
Kind
Implementation
Participate
Software
Designer
Fully
Design

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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 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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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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I'm obsessively detail-oriented.
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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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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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There's ways to amuse yourself while doing things and thats how I look at efficency.
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I define UNIX as 30 definitions of regular expressions living under one roof.
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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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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 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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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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The best theory is inspired by practice.
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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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How can you own numbers? Numbers belong to the world.
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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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A mathematical formula should never be owned by anybody! Mathematics belong to God.
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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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An algorithm must be seen to be believed.
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