Everyday life is like programming, I guess. If you love something you can put beauty into it.
Interpretation
Everyday life can be appreciated and enhanced through a passionate perspective.
Donald Knuth compares everyday life to programming, suggesting that just as a programmer can infuse their code with creativity and elegance, individuals can also enhance their daily routines and interactions with beauty if they approach them with love and passion. This analogy highlights the importance of bringing a creative mindset to all aspects of life.
In practice
This quote can be shared during a motivational speech to encourage creativity in work.
Computer programming is an art, because it applies accumulated knowledge to the world, because it requires skill and ingenuity, and especially because it produces objects of beauty. A programmer who subconsciously views himself as an artist will enjoy what he does and will do it better.
The hardest thing is to go to sleep at night, when there are so many urgent things needing to be done. A huge gap exists between what we know is possible with today's machines and what we have so far been able to finish.
An algorithm must be seen to be believed.
The process of preparing programs for a digital computer is especially attractive, not only because it can economically and scientifically rewarding, but also because it can be an aesthetic experience much like composing poetry or music.
People who are more than casually interested in computers should have at least some idea of what the underlying hardware is like. Otherwise the programs they write will be pretty weird.
To me, it looks more or less like the hardware designers have run out of ideas and that they're trying to pass the blame for the future demise of Moore's Law to the software writers by giving us machines that work faster only on a few key benchmarks!
If you wanted to show a mirror to people that says, 'You've been drunk on money,' they're not going to want to see it. But if you reflected that mirror on another time they'd be willing to. People will need an explanation of where we are and where we've been, and 'The Great Gatsby' can provide that explanation.
Cooking is the art of adjustment.
If all your life means to you is water running over rocks, then photograph it, but I want to create something that would not have existed without me.
For myself and my own experience now, I don't really need any music. I have enough to listen to with just the sounds of the environment. I listen to the sounds of 6th avenue.
Lord, heap miseries upon us yet entwine our arts with laughters low.
His soul is in his stories. I once asked him who inspired him to create his characters, and his answer was no one. That all his characters were himself.
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