Quote by Knuth

[Christopher Dimech]

> Sent: Wednesday, July 07, 2021 at 7:51 AM
> From: "Jean Louis" <bugs@gnu.support>
> To: tomas@tuxteam.de
> Cc: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
> Subject: Quote by Knuth
>
> * tomas@tuxteam.de <tomas@tuxteam.de> [2021-07-05 18:42]:
> > There's at least one wise person who put that exactly the other
> > way around:
> >
> >   "Programming is the art of telling another human being
> >    what one wants the computer to do"
> >
> >    -- D.E.Knuth [1]
>
> Maybe Knuth's quote is related to literate programming. Maybe it is
> related to the resulting program and user's view of it.
>
> It mentions "another human being" and not "another programmer"
> specifically.
>
> It is nice to have quotes.
>
> It is nice to remember that quotes apply only within specific
> contexts and that there is no absoluta.

Knuth was wrong on so many things.  I understand what he means, but
literate programming is not the way.  Have got Joris van der Hoeven -
author of texmacs - fuming when I criticised him, because I did not
do the same with  Donald.  I'm doing it now.

Still, Knuth did a much better job making tex, than Hoeven doing texmacs.
In this regard, texmacs is a very disappointing implementation with a
syntax that no human being will find useful at all.

At the beginning of the computer age (1970) when the long-known algorithms
were first put on computers, they turned out to be highly inefficient.

Therefore, a large part of the work consisted in revisiting classical 
mathematics
to make it effective and to discover efficient algorithms to implement.

> Programs are made for people, users could not care less how is program
> really written. They need not know it.
>
> Theoreticall background may be so much distinct from practical
> application.
>
> Majority of applications today are for users and their life, business
> or entertainment. They care less of what we theoretically speak
> about the underlying program. What they want is functional software,
> and users often don't even know they are running "software", as terms
> changed so much. They may call it by name, like "Open Google" when
> they open any kind of browser, they may not know what "browser" ist,
> etc.
>
> --
> Jean
>
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>
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>
>