"When you write a program, think of it……" — Donald Knuth
"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."
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Donald Knuth
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57 Quotes by Donald Knuth
Donald Knuth has 57 quotes on this site.
A few more worth reading:
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Computers are good at following instructions, but not at reading your mind.
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If you optimize everything, you will always be unhappy.
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People think that computer science is the art of geniuses but the actual reality is the opposite, just many people…
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Premature optimization is the root of all evil.
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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…
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Always remember, however, that there’s usually a simpler and better way to do something than the first way that pops…
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Computer programming is an art, because it applies accumulated knowledge to the world, because it requires skill and ingenuity, and…
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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…
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The psychological profiling [of a programmer] is mostly the ability to shift levels of abstraction, from low level to high…
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The important thing, once you have enough to eat and a nice house, is what you can do for others,…
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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…
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I define UNIX as 30 definitions of regular expressions living under one roof.
See all 57 quotes by Donald Knuth »
More Beings Quotes
This quote is filed under Beings Quotes,
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Mythology and science both extend the scope of human beings. Like science and technology, mythology, as we shall see, is…
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But human beings fall easily into despair, and from the very beginning we invented stories that enabled us to place…
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Guns are evil! And very little good comes from the availability of a bullet designed to kill human beings!
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It's extraordinary how self-obsessed human beings are. The things that people always go on about is, 'tell us about us',…
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Very few species have survived unchanged. There's one called lingula, which is a little shellfish, a little brachiopod about the…
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I am truly free only when all human beings, men and women, are equally free. The freedom of other men,…
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Pessimists are the people who have no hope for themselves or for others. Pessimists are also people who think the…
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What is a child, monsieur, but the image of two beings, the fruit of two sentiments spontaneously blended?
— Honore de Balzac
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Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable…
— Douglas Adams
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