[Dlab-devel] Donald E. Knuth

[Bernardo I. <be...@de...>]

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Salve,

alcuni commenti interessanti dei lettori di Slashdot sull'autore di
The Art of Computer Programming e del TeX...

 Allora non sono l'unico ad ammirare Knuth sopra ogni altro essere vivente ;-)))


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My favorite Knuth quote, when he gave a class a snippet of code to use in their program (not verbatim, sorry):

"Be careful with this code; I have only proven it correct, not tested it."

A demonstration of Hacker Nature:

He wasn't happy with the typesetting on his first book, and decided this should be done by computer, so he wrote a markup language for typesetting.

Of course, he wanted to do it right, so this took him... well... about a decade. And when he was done, he had written TeX. He was very pleased; his publishers thought this was odd, as the new typesetting looked worse than the old.

A few years later, high-resolution laser printers became available; TeX already suppported them, and lo and behold, the new version did look better.

TeX is a huge monster of a programming language/application. Knuth offered a cash prize of $(2^N) for the Nth unique bug report. TeX is now, like, 20 years old, and that system cost him under $1K.

If programmers were Jedi, he would be Yoda.
If programmers were wizards, he was be Gandalf.

He is the serious, friendly grandfather who can kick the butts of all us whippersnapers. So pay attention!


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He is beyond hardcore. To explain Donald Knuth's relevance to computing (and geeks should all know who he is) is like explaining Paul's relevance to the Catholic Church. He isn't God, he isn't the Son of God, but he was sent by God to explain God to the masses. 

Reading the Art of Computer Programing is like translating the Bible from the original greek. You know there is something profound there, but until you've done it a few times and looked back on it, you are more concerned with trying to figure out each word. 

I'm a little awestruck by him. 

By the way, the Paul reference is not a flippant one, check out his other books,Things a Computer Scientist Rarely Talks About [amazon.com], and 3: 16: Bible Texts Illuminated [amazon.com], for explanations of why not every christian is a fool. 

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- -- 
  // Bernardo Innocenti - Develer S.r.l., R&D dept.
\X/  http://www.develer.com/

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