Muli Ben-Yehuda's journal

October 31, 2004

Donald E. Knuth, Computer Programming as an Art.

Filed under: Uncategorized — Muli Ben-Yehuda @ 10:59 PM

Tonight’s reading is Donald
E. Knuth’s
Turing
award
lecture, Computer Programming as an Art.

“Therefore I want to address my closing remarks to the system
programmers and the machine designers who produce the systems that the
rest of us must work with. Please, give us tools that are a pleasure
to use, especially for our routine assignments, instead of providing
something we have to fight with. Please give us tools that encourage
us to write better programs, by enhancing our pleasure when we do so.”

Words to live by. I have rarely heard a better elucidated reason to
use free software.

1 Comment »

  1. Unknown's avatar

    Few years back, this would have reminded me of Linux Kernel Debuggers πŸ™‚
    Great lecture though,
    thanks for sharing.

    Comment by jnagal — November 17, 2004 @ 10:39 PM | Reply


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