Quote

I'm obsessively detail-oriented.

Donald Knuth

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Detail
Details
Obsessively
Oriented

More quotes by Donald Knuth

Image
By understanding a machine-oriented language, the programmer will tend to use a much more efficient method it is much closer to reality.
Donald Knuth
Image
Meta-design is much more difficult than design it's easier to draw something than to explain how to draw it.
Donald Knuth
Image
The best theory is inspired by practice.
Donald Knuth
Image
It would be nice if we could design a virtual reality in Hyperbolic Space, and meet each other there.
Donald Knuth
Image
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.
Donald Knuth
Image
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.
Donald Knuth
Image
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
Donald Knuth
Image
I define UNIX as 30 definitions of regular expressions living under one roof.
Donald Knuth
Image
There's ways to amuse yourself while doing things and thats how I look at efficency.
Donald Knuth
Image
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
Image
An algorithm must be seen to be believed.
Donald Knuth
Image
Science is what we understand well enough to explain to a computer. Art is everything else we do.
Donald Knuth
Image
A mathematical formula should never be owned by anybody! Mathematics belong to God.
Donald Knuth
Image
Beware of bugs in the above code I have only proved it correct, not tried it.
Donald Knuth
Image
How can you own numbers? Numbers belong to the world.
Donald Knuth
Image
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.
Donald Knuth
Image
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
Donald Knuth
Image
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.
Donald Knuth
Image
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.
Donald Knuth
Image
I can’t go to a restaurant and order food because I keep looking at the fonts on the menu.
Donald Knuth