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.
Interpretation
Programming is a blend of science and art, akin to poetry and music creation.
Donald Knuth emphasizes that programming is not just a technical task but also a creative pursuit. It combines economic efficiency and scientific rigor with an aesthetic aspect that mirrors artistic disciplines like poetry and music, suggesting that the beauty of programming lies in its intellectual challenge and creative expression.
In practice
In a tech conference speech about the beauty of coding.
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.
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.
Everyday life is like programming, I guess. If you love something you can put beauty into it.
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!
Progress is possible only if we train ourselves to think about programs without thinking of them as pieces of executable code.
There is no such thing as information overload, just bad design. If something is cluttered and/or confusing, fix your design.
Technology is not an image of the world but a way of operating on reality. The nihilism of technology lies not only in the fact that it is the most perfect expression of the will to power... but also in the fact that it lacks meaning.
More and more major businesses and industries are being run on software and delivered as online services - from movies to agriculture to national defense.
The technotronic era involves the gradual appearance of a more controlled society. Such a society would be dominated by an elite, unrestrained by traditional values. Soon it will be possible to assert almost continuous surveillance over every citizen and maintain up-to-date complete files containing even the most personal information about the citizen. These files will be subject to instantaneous retrieval by the authorities.
I was in Bangalore, India, the Silicon Valley of India, when I realized that the world was flat.
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