Donald Knuth

"I've never been more than about six months ahead of a deadline."

"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 on explaining to human beings what we want the computer to do."

"The most important thing in the programming language is the name. A language will not succeed without a good name."

"One of my goals has always been to increase the understanding of computer science."

"Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place."

"I'm a little bit sorry for people who have never experienced the feeling of getting paid for something that feels like playing."

"The real problem with debugging is that the more code you write, the more places there are for bugs to hide."

"The best way to predict the future is to invent it."

"When you make the finding yourself, the stakes are higher so you pay more attention."

"Computer programming is an art because it applies accumulated knowledge of the best means to reach chosen ends."

"I think I am a better scientist because I am a programmer, and a better programmer because I am a scientist."

"Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand."

"The real problem is how do we get people to think about the problems they are solving."

"It is a pleasure to discover something, not a burden."

"The most important tool a programmer has is the mind."

"Computers are getting smarter all the time; scientists tell us they have created a computer that can run 50,000 chess positions per second."

"Seek respect rather than attention."

"The whole attitude toward error correction is a sign of the culture of a civilization."

"I am not satisfied with my work unless I am convinced it is as good as I can make it."

"One of the most important principles for the good programming is to refuse to guess; instead, to measure."

"The key to good programming is patience and discipline."

"I don't want to waste anyone's time or mine by discussing things which are non-essential."

"Memory is tricky. It's not very reliable at the best of times, and gets worse as you get older."

"Generosity with time and attention is the highest form of respect."

"The most dangerous system is the one that nobody is guarding against."

"In fact, my main conclusion after spending ten years of my life on this project is that the use of access-controlled variables was a major design error."

"The power of a computer is measured by the complexity of the problems it can solve."

"I hate to be the one always saying 'no' to interesting projects, but somebody has to."

"The key to getting better is studying your own failures."

"I would not think we have been very successful if we could not successfully explain things."