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Knuth: All Questions Answered
sunhou writes: "The AMS published a lecture by Donald Knuth called All Questions Answered (pdf), where Knuth simply responded to questions from the audience. Topics ranged from errors in software ('I think Microsoft should say, "You'll get a check from Bill Gates every time you find an error"') to how he gets distracted by fonts on restaurant menus, to software patents. There were some really good questions (and responses)."
TeX has always facinated me. Let's face it, it works. I believe there is more bugs than he is writing checks for, but that said they are seldom encountered by mere mortals. If you do normal stuff it just works.
There is nothing else like it. No commercial product, no non-commercial product. If you want to typeset mathematics, it's the only game in town. If you want to typeset anything, it's one of very few games in town. It's open source. It's multi-platform. It has a huge following, but gets no press.
It really is an amazing thing, and something that every open source project should aspire to....
http://russnelson.com/fea-knuth.pdf
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
got this in an email a few days ago....
Richard M. Stallman, Linus Torvalds, and Donald E. Knuth
engage in a discussion on whose impact on the computerized world was the greatest.
Stallman: "God told me I have programmed the best editor in
the world!"
Torvalds: "Well, God told *me* that I have programmed the
best operating system in the world!"
Knuth: "Wait, wait - I never said that."
http://access.adobe.com/adv_form.html
just enter the url of said pdf and hit submit and voila good ol' html is returned
Well, I would like to ask the slashdot editors to please post more Knuth news. I think that his contributions to Computer Science deserve to be more widely appreciated by everybody even remotely connected with Computer Science (and not only the theoretically inclined people).
Unfortunately, I recognize that not everybody reading Slashdot has a theoretical education in Computer Science (well, many people are only practically trained -- if such a thing even exists) and miss the elegant construction of algorithms that Donald Knuth does in his books, algorithms which are efficient both regarding space and time (things which I miss in most software being written today, sadly).
This is not to mention the care with which his books are written, from didactic, technical and typographical standpoints: a lesson on how to write well.
I guess that the problem I mentioned above about current programmers writing code which is not exactly space- and time-efficient is that they must think "it's not worth it" (or many haven't actually even thought about the subject). A pity indeed.
This is, unfortunately, one of the bad sides of the ease of current (integrated) programming environments (which doesn't man that they are bad): people which aren't exactly trained can program, their programs run, but in a sub-optimal way.
I also think that many programming environments are an incentive to trial-and-error programming ("recompiling the program is too easy -- don't even bother to think if we have to add 1 or subtract 1"). This, of course, leads to sloopy programming.
Anyway, back to Knuth, I would really love to see a Slashdot interview with him, as I would appreciate anything regarding him and computers.
Knuth truly does represent much of what is good an interesting about our profession.
..." is still frighteningly true; other engineering professions do not often have a commonplace equivalent of a blue-screen or core-dump. There are occasional engineering failures, but none as widespread as programming errors.
For those who didn't read the article, or didn't come across this fact elsewhere, Knuth actually personally writes a cheque to anyone who finds errors in his books.
While the algorithms and theory that he wrote about in his classic texts are used by computer programmers worldwide every day, it's unfortunate that the kind of pride of workmanship that he personally demonstrates, doesn't seem to be the norm.
I've always felt like the programming profession was, and still is, a bit of a joke as far as standardized quality goes, as compared to other engineering disciplines. The old joke, "if builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs
Maybe because we're still forging new ground so quickly that it can't be expected to have solid results. Still, for things as standardized, commonplace, and essential as operating systems, the design should be such that a blue screen is unheard of.
-me
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.