Donald Knuth Quotes

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by samhan • 14 years ago

27 10 14 years ago

jgrahamc• 14 years ago

I saw Knuth talk at Kepler's Bookstore in Menlo Park some years ago. Someone asked him which language was better Java or C++. He replied: "Whichever has the better debugger".

AndrewDucker• 14 years ago

Now _that_ is wisdom. It's the tooling that's important, of which the language is only one part.

jiggy2011• 14 years ago

Are most debuggers now equivalent nowadays?

All I need it to do is set breakpoints and inspect variable/memory values.

zvrba2• 14 years ago

No, they aren't. With Java you can change code while the application is running and it will be hot-swapped after you have recompiled it.

I learned about this feature when playing a bit in Eclipse, forgot to kill the program between edits, and got a warning that the recompiled class couldn't be hot-swapped because its signature changed. And then I sat there in awe; I can just dream about this functioning reliably with C++.

ret• 14 years ago

2 other quotes:

Q: "If you were young again, would you start writing TeX again or would you use Microsoft Word, or another word processor?" A: "I hope to die before I have to use Microsoft Word." —Harald Koenig asking Donald Knuth, Tübingen, 2001 Oct 2.

"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."

nosse• 14 years ago

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

This is so true. It also applies in any factory and any construction site and any dorm-room.

Donald Knuth Quotes

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