Donald Knuth Quotes (19 Quotes)


    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.

    God is a challenge because there is no proof of his existence and therefore the search must continue.

    If you optimize everything, you will always be unhappy.

    A list is only as strong as its weakest link.

    Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it.


    Science is what we understand well enough to explain to a computer. Art is everything else we do.

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

    My feeling is that when we prepare a program, the experience can be just like composing poetry or music as Andrei Ershov has said, programming can give us both intellectual and emotional satisfaction, because it is a real achievement to master complexity and to establish a system of consistent rules.

    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.

    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.

    Any inaccuracies in this index may be explained by the fact that it has been sorted with the help of a computer.

    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.

    The difference between art and science is that science is what people understand well enough to explain to a computer. All else is art.

    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.

    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.

    People think that computer science is the art of geniuses but the actual reality is the opposite, just many people doing things that build on eachother, like a wall of mini stones.

    The hardest thing is to go to sleep at night, when there are so many urgent things needing to be done. A huge gap exists between what we know is possible with today's machines and what we have so far been able to finish.


    There's ways to amuse yourself while doing things and thats how I look at efficency.


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