Meta-design is much more difficult than design; it's easier to draw something than to explain how to draw it.

These machines have no common sense; they have not yet learned to "think," and they do exactly as they are told, no more and no less. This fact is the hardest concept to grasp when one first tries to use a computer.

Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it.

I decry the current tendency to seek patents on algorithms. There are better ways to earn a living than to prevent other people from making use of one's contributions to computer science.

The book Dynamic Programming by Richard Bellman is an important, pioneering work in which a group of problems is collected together at the end of some chapters under the heading "Exercises and Research Problems," with extremely trivial questions appearing in the midst of deep, unsolved problems. It is rumored that someone once asked Dr. Bellman how to tell the exercises apart from the research problems, and he replied: "If you can solve it, it is an exercise; otherwise it's a research problem."

We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil.

I have a hunch that the unknown sequences of DNA will decode into copyright notices and patent protections.