Interview with Donald Knuth

http://www.simple-talk.com/opinion/geek-of-the-week/donald-knuth-geek-of-the-week/

by mqt • 17 years ago

102 33 17 years ago

cschep• 17 years ago

It felt like it cut off at the end, am I missing something? Quite enjoyable read, it'd be fun to see Knuth play the organ, he should sell tickets!

jimbokun• 17 years ago

"As Sportin' Life says in Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess: ‘Methusaleh lived nine hundred years. But who calls dat livin’ when no gal will give in, to no one who’s nine hundred years?’ I may have mis-remembered that lyric, but you get my drift."

I think he pretty much had to wrap things up on that quote, as nothing else in the interview could possibly top it. At least it made me LOL.

amichail7• 17 years ago

There is much to admire about Knuth's contributions to CS, but advancing the field in an open-ended creative way is not one of them.

The startup community has done more in that respect than academia, but why should academics not contribute to inventing novel applications?

We need to acknowledge such accomplishments more, even if they appear less mathematical/scientific.

benhoyt• 17 years ago

As I see it, Knuth is to computer science what Tolkien was to literature. Neither man is what you'd call "hip and creative", but both produced a life time's worth of high quality, painstakingly careful work. (In fact, it'd be interesting to compare TAOCP and LOTR in more depth.)

If you try to be creative, you'll end up with nothing but emperor-has-no-clothes modern art (which won't get you very far in computing). But if you do quality work, you may well get creativity thrown in as a bonus.

amichail7• 17 years ago

People try to be creative all the time in startups and games. And it can be quite profitable too.

As for computing in academia, it's not set in stone. CS can be expanded or a new field created to reward creativity.

MrRage• 17 years ago

> emperor-has-no-clothes modern art

I admit I have a hard time "getting" most modern art. But seeing the actual pieces in person, especially some Picasso and Pollock, is quite a different experience than seeing dinky little prints in an art book.

jordanb• 17 years ago

TAOCP is a very thorough "text book" for people who really are interested in the subject matter. It's not really Knuth's goal to break new ground with it, but to compile the most interesting things he's found into a single work.

It's hardly the only thing he's done though. Even without TAOCP, he's one of the more prolific and accomplished computer scientists in history: http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/vita.html

me2i81• 17 years ago

Bah. Knuth wrote several interesting applications, including one that changed the face of mathematics more in the last 20 years than any other development. Where would math be without TeX? But beyond that, there's more to CS than "novel applications," and Knuth has been one of the most important theoretical computer scientists in the world, and was one of the fathers of the field, inventing asymptotic analysis of algorithms, inventing the parsing algorithms used by nearly every compiler on the planet, and on and on.

amichail7• 17 years ago

Is TeX really a novel app in the sense that twitter say is?

In fact, TeX isn't even the first of its kind.

jacobolus2• 17 years ago

Did you try reading the article? This bit from Knuth is a fun contrast to your comment:

> Alas, people these days rarely measure a computer scientist by standards of beauty and interest; they measure us by dollars or by applications rather than by contributions to knowledge, even though contributions to knowledge are the necessary ingredient to make previously unthinkable applications possible.

amichail7• 17 years ago

Try getting a grant proposal or publishing a paper on a novel application without a proper scientific evaluation.

Imagine for example how you would evaluate twitter in a scientific way.

fizx• 17 years ago

This seems like a good time to point out that his annual "Christmas Tree" lecture is a week from today.

http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/musings.html

brianobush2• 17 years ago

Knuth always reminds me of my own passion that gets obscured by day-to-day work and life. Loving machines and the beauty within and not for any economic value.

Still waiting for his volume on lexing and parsing techniques. I always love his writing and how complete he expresses any particular problem.

gchpaco3• 17 years ago

It is my dearest hope that he lives long enough to finish AoCP, but I fear the odds are against it.

brianobush2• 17 years ago

Nonetheless, his work thus far has been a remarkable achievement.

weaksauce• 17 years ago

He thinks that it's only 5 years away... 2015 est. completion date.

limist• 17 years ago

<snip> Interviewer: Would you still study computers whether or not it had any commercial value?

Knuth: Thank you for asking that question. I have always been attracted to computer science because it involves beautiful patterns, rather like the way dancers enjoy choreography, and because questions such as "What can be computed efficiently?" are profoundly interesting and challenging. </snip>

The words and perspective of a master. His description of his work habits (no email, uninterrupted focus) is congruent with one who embodies the Tao of Programming. :)

Interview with Donald Knuth

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