By understanding a machine-oriented language, the programmer will tend to use a much more efficient method; it is much closer to reality.
Interpretation
Understanding machine-oriented language leads to more efficient programming methods.
Donald Knuth emphasizes the importance of understanding machine-oriented languages for programmers. By gaining insights into how machines operate at a lower level, programmers can create more efficient and effective solutions, as they will be closer to the reality of the computational environment.
In practice
This quote can be used in a tech seminar to emphasize the importance of low-level programming knowledge.
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.
Everyday life is like programming, I guess. If you love something you can put beauty into it.
The internet has been a boon and a curse for teenagers.
The factory of the future will have only two employees, a man and a dog. The man will be there to feed the dog. The dog will be there to keep the man from touching the equipment.
Our technologies become more complex while we become more simple. They learn about us while we come to know less and less about them. No one person can understand everything going on in an iPhone, much less pervasive systems.
The true end users of Facebook are the marketers who want to reach and influence us. They are Facebook's paying customers; we are the product. And we are its workers. The countless hours that we - and the young, particularly - spend on our profiles are the unpaid labor on which Facebook justifies its stock valuation.
People thought I was crazy thinking about a phone you can just put in your pocket.
Before social media, if I, as an individual wanted to publish something to the world, unless I could get some local TV crew to interview me, or I wrote an op-ed or took out an ad, I had no voice.
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