Donald Knuth Quotes

Quotes about:

• Programming is the art of telling another human being what one wants the computer to do.

  Donald Knuth

  Art, Want, Computer

  64 Copy quote

• 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

  Art, Views, Skills

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

  67 Copy quote

• Always remember, however, that there’s usually a simpler and better way to do something than the first way that pops into your head.

  Donald Knuth

  Firsts, Way, Remember

  Donald Ervin Knuth (1986). “The METAFONTbook”, Addison-Wesley Professional

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• We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil.

  Donald Knuth

  Learning, Roots, Evil

  44 Copy quote

• Programs are meant to be read by humans and only incidentally for computers to execute.

  Donald Knuth

  Computer, Program, Humans

  46 Copy quote

• Computers are good at following instructions, but not at reading your mind.

  Donald Knuth

  Funny Inspirational, Reading, Following Instructions

  Donald Ervin Knuth (1984). “The texbook”, Addison-Wesley Professional

  58 Copy quote

• 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

  Practice, Attention, Spending

  "Theory and Practice". Theoretical Computer Science, 1991.

  50 Copy quote

• When you write a program, think of it primarily as a work of literature. You're trying to write something that human beings are going to read. Don't think of it primarily as something a computer is going to follow. The more effective you are at making your program readable, the more effective it's going to be: You'll understand it today, you'll understand it next week, and your successors who are going to maintain and modify it will understand it.

  Donald Knuth

  Writing, Thinking, Next Week

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

  Donald Knuth

  Funny Inspirational, Bugs, Computer

  Memorandum to Peter van Emde Boas, 29 Mar. 1977

  12 Copy quote

• If you optimize everything, you will always be unhappy.

  Donald Knuth

  Unhappy, Unhappiness, Ifs

  36 Copy quote

• The enjoyment of one's tools is an essential ingredient of successful work.

  Donald Knuth

  Successful, Essentials, Tools

  Donald E. Knuth (2014). “Art of Computer Programming, Volume 2: Seminumerical Algorithms”, p.398, Addison-Wesley Professional

  8 Copy quote

• Premature optimization is the root of all evil.

  Donald Knuth

  Science, Roots, Evil

  Donald Ervin Knuth (1986). “TEX: The Program”, Addison-Wesley Professional

  19 Copy quote

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

  Donald Knuth

  Art, Math, Science

  Foreword to the book "A=B" by Marko Petkovsek, Herbert S. Wilf and Doron Zeilberger, 1996.

  55 Copy quote

• It is much more rewarding to do more with less.

  Donald Knuth

  8 Copy quote

• Email is a wonderful thing for people whose role in life is to be on top of things. But not for me; my role is to be on the bottom of things. What I do takes long hours of studying and uninterruptible concentration.

  Donald Knuth

  Long, People, Roles

  "Email (let's drop the hyphen)". Article on a personal home page at Stanford University, www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu.

  33 Copy quote

• An algorithm must be seen to be believed.

  Donald Knuth

  Engineering, Algorithms, Computer Science

  Donald Ervin Knuth (1997). “The Art of Computer Programming: Fundamental algorithms”, Addison-Wesley Professional

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• 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.

  17 Copy quote

• The best programs are written so that computing machines can perform them quickly and so that human beings can understand them clearly. A programmer is ideally an essayist who works with traditional aesthetic and literary forms as well as mathematical concepts, to communicate the way that an algorithm works and to convince a reader that the results will be correct.

  Donald Knuth

  Machines, Algorithms, Way

  23 Copy quote

• 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 each other, like a wall of mini stones.

  Donald Knuth

  Art, Wall, Reality

  40 Copy quote

• 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

  Levels, Psychological, Lows

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

  4 Copy quote

• Everyday life is like programming, I guess. If you love something you can put beauty into it.

  Donald Knuth

  Everyday, Life Is Like, Programming

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• The best theory is inspired by practice.

  Donald Knuth

  Practice, Inspired, Theory

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• Random numbers should not be generated with a method chosen at random

  Donald Knuth

  Numbers, Method, Should

  Donald E. Knuth (2014). “Art of Computer Programming, Volume 2: Seminumerical Algorithms”, p.25, Addison-Wesley Professional

  59 Copy 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

  Animal, Thinking, People

  "The AI Revolution: The Road to Superintelligence" by Tim Urban, www.huffingtonpost.com. February 10, 2015.

  39 Copy quote

• 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.

  Donald Knuth

  Names, Important, Statistics

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