Programming/Quotes

Donald Knuth

In this sense, we should continually be striving to transform every art into a science: in the process, we advance the art.

—Donald Knuth. 1974 Turing Aware Lecture. Communications of the ACM 17 (12), (December 1974), p. 668.

The real problem is that programmers have spent far too much time worrying about efficiency in the wrong places and at the wrong times; premature optimization is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming.

—Donald Knuth. 1974 Turing Aware Lecture. Communications of the ACM 17 (12), (December 1974), p. 671.

A good technical writer, trying not to be obvious about it, but says everything twice: formally and informally. Or maybe three times.

—Donald Knuth. Algorithms, Complexity, Life, and The Art of Computer Programming. AI Podcast (December 30, 2019).

Bjarne Stroustrup

Within C++, there is a much smaller and cleaner language struggling to get out.

—Bjarne Stroustrup. The Design and Evolution of C++, p. 207.