A frequent topic of conversation that I see on places like Twitter concerns whether programming is an art or a science. Donald Knuth, a renowned academic in the field of computer science, is famous particularly for his 1974 Turing Award Lecture in which he says "Premature optimization is the root of all evil." He is also credited for another quote I rather like that relates to the science versus art discussion: "Science is knowledge which we understand so well that we can teach it to a computer; and if we don't fully understand something, it is an art to deal with it."