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Let us change our traditional attitude to the construction of programs: Instead of imagining that our main task is to instruct a computer what to do, let us concentrate rather on explaining to human beings what we want a computer to do.

— Donald Knuth Literate Programming (1984)

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More quotes by Donald Knuth

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

Computer Programming as an Art (1974)

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

The Art of Computer Programming (1968)

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

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

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

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Donald Knuth (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.