... The Designer Of A New System

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.

The Manuals We Got From Ibm Would Show Examples Of Programs And I Knew I Could Do A Heck Of A Lot Better Than That. So I Thought I Might Have Some Talent.

By Understanding A Machine-oriented Language, The Programmer Will Tend To Use A Much More Efficient Method; It Is Much Closer To Reality.

...one Of The Most Important Lessons, Perhaps, Is The Fact That Software Is Hard. From Now On I Shall Have Significantly Greater Respect For Every Successful Software Tool That I Encounter. During The Past Decade I Was Surprised To Learn That The Writing Of Programs For Tex And Metafont Proved To Be Much More Difficult Than All The Other Things I Had Done (like Proving Theorems Or Writing Books). The Creation Of Good Software Demand A Significiantly Higher Standard Of Accuracy Than Those Other Things Do, And It Requires A Longer Attention Span Than Other Intellectual Tasks.

If You Optimize Everything, You Will Always Be Unhappy.