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The best theory is inspired by practice.

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
Inspired
Theory
Practice
Best

More quotes by Donald Knuth

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The best practice is inspired by theory.
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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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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Random numbers should not be generated with a method chosen at random
Donald Knuth
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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 enjoyment of one's tools is an essential ingredient of successful work.
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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There's ways to amuse yourself while doing things and thats how I look at efficency.
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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Meta-design is much more difficult than design it's easier to draw something than to explain how to draw it.
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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I'm obsessively detail-oriented.
Donald Knuth
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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.
Donald Knuth
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Beware of bugs in the above code I have only proved it correct, not tried it.
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.
Donald Knuth
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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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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
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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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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
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Science is what we understand well enough to explain to a computer. Art is everything else we do.
Donald Knuth