FOREWORD
WHY ARE SOME programmers so much better than others? What is the magical ingredient that makes it possible for some people to resonate with computers so well, and to reach new heights of performance? Many different skills are clearly involved. But after decades of observation I’ve come to believe that one particular talent stands out among the world-class programmers I’ve known—namely, an ability to move effortlessly between different levels of abstraction.
That may sound like a scary and complex thing, inherently abstract in itself, but I think it’s not really too hard to explain. A programmer must deal with high-level concepts related to a problem area, with low-level concepts related to basic steps of computation, and with numerous ...
Get The MMIX Supplement: Supplement to The Art of Computer Programming Volumes 1, 2, 3 by Donald E. Knuth now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
