Writing good code is not just making it work, but finding the most efficient recipe, like a chef searching for the best method, not just one that works.

A good program doesn’t just work; it uses the most efficient method, like a chef choosing the optimal recipe

Knuth carefully analyzed thousands of different ways to sort or search data, measuring exactly how many steps and how much memory each method uses. Some recipes look simple but become very slow with much more data. Other, more complicated-looking recipes stay fast even with millions of entries.

Why it matters His books remain, decades later, a standard reference for software engineers.