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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
Never
Take
Going
Long
Good
Things

More quotes by Donald Knuth

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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.
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There's ways to amuse yourself while doing things and thats how I look at efficency.
Donald Knuth
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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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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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The best practice is inspired by theory.
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How can you own numbers? Numbers belong to the world.
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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.
Donald Knuth
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It would be nice if we could design a virtual reality in Hyperbolic Space, and meet each other there.
Donald Knuth
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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.
Donald Knuth
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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 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.
Donald Knuth
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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
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An algorithm must be seen to be believed.
Donald Knuth
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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.
Donald Knuth
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A mathematical formula should never be owned by anybody! Mathematics belong to God.
Donald Knuth
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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.
Donald Knuth
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I remember that mathematicians were telling me in the 1960s that they would recognize computer science as a mature discipline when it had 1,000 deep algorithms. I think we've probably reached 500.
Donald Knuth
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The designer of a new kind of system must participate fully in the implementation.
Donald Knuth
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It is much more rewarding to do more with less.
Donald Knuth
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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%
Donald Knuth