Donald Knuth Quotes

The best theory is inspired by practice.

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

It is much more rewarding to do more with less.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

[The Euclidean algorithm is] the granddaddy of all algorithms, because it is the oldest nontrivial algorithm that has survived to the present day.

Whenever the C++ language designers had two competing ideas as to how they should solve some problem, they said, "OK, we'll do them both". So the language is too baroque for my taste.

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

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

A mathematical formula should never be "owned" by anybody! Mathematics belong to God.

TeX has found at least one bug in every Pascal compiler it's been run on, I think, and at least two in every C compiler

I define UNIX as 30 definitions of regular expressions living under one roof.

The sun comes up just about as often as it goes down, in the long run, but this doesn't make its motion random.

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

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

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

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.

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%

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.

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

The best practice is inspired by theory.

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.

Programming is legitimate and necessary academic endeavour.

I can't be as confident about computer science as I can about biology. Biology easily has 500 years of exciting problems to work on. It's at that level.

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.

For his major contributions to the analysis of algorithms and the design of programming languages, and in particular for his contributions to the "art of computer programming" through his well-known books in a continuous series by this title.

It would be nice if we could design a virtual reality in Hyperbolic Space, and meet each other there.

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.

The language in which we express our ideas has a strong influence on our thought processes.

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

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.

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.

If you optimize everything, you will always be unhappy.

By understanding a machine-oriented language, the programmer will tend to use a much more efficient method; it is much closer to reality.