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I've never been a good estimator of how long things are going to take.
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
Take
Going
Long
Good
Things
Never
More quotes by Donald Knuth
Any inaccuracies in this index may be explained by the fact that it has been prepared with the help of a computer.
Donald Knuth
We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil.
Donald Knuth
How can you own numbers? Numbers belong to the world.
Donald Knuth
Science is what we understand well enough to explain to a computer. Art is everything else we do.
Donald Knuth
Computers are good at following instructions, but not at reading your mind.
Donald Knuth
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.
Donald Knuth
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.
Donald Knuth
It would be nice if we could design a virtual reality in Hyperbolic Space, and meet each other there.
Donald Knuth
Computer programming is an art, because it applies accumulated knowledge to the world, because it requires skill and ingenuity, and especially because it produces objects of beauty. A programmer who subconsciously views himself as an artist will enjoy what he does and will do it better.
Donald Knuth
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
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.
Donald Knuth
A mathematical formula should never be owned by anybody! Mathematics belong to God.
Donald Knuth
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.
Donald Knuth
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.
Donald Knuth
Meta-design is much more difficult than design it's easier to draw something than to explain how to draw it.
Donald Knuth
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.
Donald Knuth
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
There's ways to amuse yourself while doing things and thats how I look at efficency.
Donald Knuth
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
An algorithm must be seen to be believed.
Donald Knuth
