Donald Knuth
Donald Knuth
Donald Ervin Knuthis an American computer scientist, mathematician, and professor emeritus at Stanford University...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionMathematician
Date of Birth10 January 1938
CountryUnited States of America
funny-inspirational bugs computer
Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it.
names important statistics
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 trying study
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.
people long roles
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.
numbers world
How can you own [...] numbers? Numbers belong to the world.
nice science reality
It would be nice if we could design a virtual reality in Hyperbolic Space, and meet each other there.
best-practices practice inspired
The best practice is inspired by theory.
tree computer computer-science
Trees sprout up just about everywhere in computer science...
science technology mathematics
A mathematical formula should never be "owned" by anybody! Mathematics belong to God.
levels psychological lows
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.
nice house important
The important thing, once you have enough to eat and a nice house, is what you can do for others, what you can contribute to the enterprise as a whole.
expression definitions unix
I define UNIX as 30 definitions of regular expressions living under one roof.
mistake errors trying
My first program taught me a lot about the errors that I was going to be making in the future, and also about how to find errors. That's sort of the story of my life, making errors and trying to recover from them. I try to get things correct. I probably obsess about not making too many mistakes.
machines algorithms way
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.