Donald Knuth Quotes - Page 2

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Art Books Computers Design Efficiency Evil Language

Programmers waste enormous amounts of time thinking about, or worrying about, the speed of noncritical parts of their programs, and these attempts at efficiency actually have a strong negative impact when debugging and maintenance are considered. 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

Strong, Opportunity, Thinking

"Computer Programming as an Art". Communications of the ACM, Volume 17, Issue 12, December 1974.

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The best practice is inspired by theory.

Donald Knuth

Best Practices, Practice, Inspired

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The whole thing that makes a mathematician’s life worthwhile is that he gets the grudging admiration of three or four colleagues.

Donald Knuth

Four, Three, Admiration

Interview with Jack Woehr, Dr. Dobb's Journal, April 1996.

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...methods are more important than facts. The educational value of a problem given to a student depends mostly on how often the thought processes that are invoked to solve it will be helpful in later situations. It has little to do with how useful the answer to the problem may be. On the other hand, a good problem must also motivate the students; they should be interested in seeing the answer. Since students differ so greatly, I cannot expect everyone to like the problems that please me.

Donald Knuth

Educational, Learning, Hands

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Trees sprout up just about everywhere in computer science.

Donald Knuth

Tree, Computer, Computer Science

Donald E. Knuth (2013). “Art of Computer Programming, Volume 4, Fascicle 4,The: Generating All Trees--History of Combinatorial Generation”, p.2, Addison-Wesley Professional

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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

People, Trying, Study

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I have a hunch that the unknown sequences of DNA will decode into copyright notices and patent protections.

Donald Knuth

Science, Dna, Patents

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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

Memories, Jewels, Ubuntu

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The book Dynamic Programming by Richard Bellman is an important, pioneering work in which a group of problems is collected together at the end of some chapters under the heading "Exercises and Research Problems," with extremely trivial questions appearing in the midst of deep, unsolved problems. It is rumored that someone once asked Dr. Bellman how to tell the exercises apart from the research problems, and he replied: "If you can solve it, it is an exercise; otherwise it's a research problem."

Donald Knuth

Book, Exercise, Important

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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

Change, Attitude, Learning

"The Art of Computer Programming. Volume 3". Book by Donald Knuth, www.wired.com. 1973.

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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

Writing, Should Have, Ideas

"MMIX 2009 a RISC computer for the third millennium". www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu.

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A list is only as strong as its weakest link.

Donald Knuth

Teamwork, Strong, Team Building

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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.

Donald Knuth

Art, Computer, Teach

"Computer Programming as an Art". Communications of the ACM, Volume 17, Issue 12, dl.acm.org. December 1974.

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The process of preparing programs for a digital computer is especially attractive, not only because it can economically and scientifically rewarding, but also because it can be an aesthetic experience much like composing poetry or music.

Donald Knuth

Digital, Computer, Program

Donald E. Knuth (1997). “The Art of Computer Programming: Volume 1: Fundamental Algorithms”, p.6, Addison-Wesley Professional

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... the designer of a new system must not only be the implementor and the first large-scale user; the designer should also write the first user manual. ... If I had not participated fully in all these activities, literally hundreds of improvements would never have been made, because I would never have thought of them or perceived why they were important.

Donald Knuth

Writing, Design, Important

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I can’t go to a restaurant and order food because I keep looking at the fonts on the menu.

Donald Knuth

Order, Fonts, Restaurants

"All Questions Answered". Notices of the AMS 49 (3), March 2002.

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The most important thing in the kitchen is the waste paper basket and it needs to be centrally located.

Donald Knuth

Kitchen, Important, Needs

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In fact what I would like to see is thousands of computer scientists let loose to do whatever they want. That's what really advances the field.

Donald Knuth

Want, Fields, Facts

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...One of the most important lessons, perhaps, is the fact that SOFTWARE IS HARD. From now on I shall have significantly greater respect for every successful software tool that I encounter. During the past decade I was surprised to learn that the writing of programs for TeX and Metafont proved to be much more difficult than all the other things I had done (like proving theorems or writing books). The creation of good software demand a significiantly higher standard of accuracy than those other things do, and it requires a longer attention span than other intellectual tasks.

Donald Knuth

Book, Writing, Learning

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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

Writing, Style, Machines

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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

Opportunity, Roots, Evil

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These machines have no common sense; they have not yet learned to "think," and they do exactly as they are told, no more and no less. This fact is the hardest concept to grasp when one first tries to use a computer.

Donald Knuth

Thinking, Common Sense, Trying

Donald Ervin Knuth (1973). “The Art of Computer Programming: Fundamental algorithms”, Addison Wesley Publishing Company

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How can you own numbers? Numbers belong to the world.

Donald Knuth

Numbers, World

"Working on My Typesetting Program". www.webofstories.com.

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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

Inspirational, Writing, Mean

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I'm obsessively detail-oriented.

Donald Knuth

Details

"The art of Don E. Knuth". Interview with Mark Wallace, www.salon.com. September 16, 1999.

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Born: January 10, 1938
Occupation: Computer Scientist
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