Cat of the Day

[timelets]

and the rest of the story...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/17/science/donald-knuth-computers-algorithms-programming.html

During summer vacations, Dr. Knuth made more money than professors earned in a year by writing compilers. A compiler is like a translator, converting a high-level programming language (resembling algebra) to a lower-level one (sometimes arcane binary) and, ideally, improving it in the process. In computer science, “optimization” is truly an art, and this is articulated in another Knuthian proverb: “Premature optimization is the root of all evil.”