Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
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
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
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
Without
Essentially
Much
Failed
Thinking
Somehow
People
Requires
Animals
Harder
Animal
Everything
Succeeded
More quotes by 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
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
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
Everyday life is like programming, I guess. If you love something you can put beauty into it.
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 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
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
I define UNIX as 30 definitions of regular expressions living under one roof.
Donald Knuth
We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil.
Donald Knuth
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
Programming is legitimate and necessary academic endeavour.
Donald Knuth
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
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
Beware of bugs in the above code I have only proved it correct, not tried it.
Donald Knuth
An algorithm must be seen to be believed.
Donald Knuth
I'm obsessively detail-oriented.
Donald Knuth
I've never been a good estimator of how long things are going to take.
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
The best practice is inspired by theory.
Donald Knuth