
How a Startup from Krakow Got Mentioned in “The Art of Computer Programming” - mci
https://www.sinterit.com/how-a-startup-from-krakow-got-mentioned-in-the-art-of-computer-programming/
======
svat
Apart from the 2016 Christmas Tree lecture [1] (which is even available in 3D
[2]), Knuth also mentioned this “mysterious package from Poland” during an
earlier (a week earlier) lecture at Brown University [3] (about 25 minutes
in).

I love this talk (he gave roughly the same talk at both places, though one was
more rushed than the other). He goes pretty deep into history — for example
his discussion of Hamiltonian tours (knight's tours etc.) in Sanskrit poetry
is at a level of detail that I have not seen in any other published source in
English. After knowing that he was interested in this topic, I requested a
contemporary Sanskrit poet to write a “knight's tour” Sanskrit poem, and gave
it to Knuth as a gift. He loved it!

[1]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjZB9HvddQk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjZB9HvddQk)

[2]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DrzK3Z0rg0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DrzK3Z0rg0)

[3]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UFkH5ZlVqQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UFkH5ZlVqQ)

~~~
tuomosipola
What a cool gift. I didn't know Knuth was into Sanskrit poetry. Nice to notice
that people from STEM fields are interested in things like that. I'm always
happy to see something related to ancient languages in HN.

~~~
chubot
There is perhaps a technical reason for this. Computer languages are described
using BNF notation, apparently invented in the 20th century, but others have
noted that Panini did this 2500 years earlier, describing Sanskrit with a
similar notation:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backus%E2%80%93Naur_form](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backus%E2%80%93Naur_form)

 _The idea of describing the structure of language using rewriting rules can
be traced back to at least the work of Pāṇini (ancient Indian Sanskrit
grammarian and a revered scholar in Hinduism who lived sometime between the
7th and 4th century BCE).[1][2] His notation to describe Sanskrit word
structure notation is equivalent in power to that of Backus and has many
similar properties._

Citation:

[https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=363165](https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=363165)

I can't copy the text here, but it's worth a read:

[https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/association-for-computing-
machin...](https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/association-for-computing-
machinery/p-nini-backus-form-suggested-993dM00q6Q)

Knuth is mentioned in the same letter as Panini, regarding the naming of
"BNF".

[https://www.infinityfoundation.com/mandala/t_es/t_es_rao-
t_s...](https://www.infinityfoundation.com/mandala/t_es/t_es_rao-t_syntax.htm)

Knuth invented LR parsing of context free grammars:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LR_parser](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LR_parser)

 _LR parsers were invented by Donald Knuth in 1965 as an efficient
generalization of precedence parsers. Knuth proved that LR parsers were the
most general-purpose parsers possible that would still be efficient in the
worst cases._

~~~
bakul
It is widely assumed Pāṇinian languages (generated using the formalism he used
for describing Sanskrit) are context free languages but the following paper
argues that they are a much larger set than CFLs.

[https://web.stanford.edu/~kiparsky/Papers/panini-1.pdf](https://web.stanford.edu/~kiparsky/Papers/panini-1.pdf)

My Knuth tale: I happened to be sitting near Prof. Knuth at a dinner last
December and I mentioned to him Pāṇini & Sanskrit in the context of something
I work on now and then. He heard Sanskrit and immediately pointed me to this
Christmas lecture of his!

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dbdr
Retrospectively considering "It would be nice to own a 3D-printed object like
this!" as an understatement (i.e. a "mistake" in his book) was a clever hack
to create an excuse for giving them one of his famous reward checks. And kind
and hilarious to boot! Prof. Knuth is amazing.

------
TeMPOraL
Nice one, congrats!

(Also imagine my surprise, seeing my home town mentioned on the front page of
HN this early morning! I thought for a second that sleep deprivation finally
got the best of me.)

I wish you best of luck. I used to be in the Kraków's 3DP commumity back in
Materialination heydays. That was before you were founded, but maybe we've
crossed paths there.

------
hnkain
It looks like they got the N upside-down. The top of the N (the end with two
serifs, as you can see here
[http://www.identifont.com/similar?TI](http://www.identifont.com/similar?TI) )
is pointing to M, rather than the bottom.

~~~
jammaloo
It looks like you are correct. They seem to have taken the design from Donald
Knuth, who put the N in upside down.

------
YeGoblynQueenne
Of course this is exceedingly cool and the item itself is of good quality, but
it should be said that it's possible to make your own twenty-sided dice with
whatever you want on their faces, by ordering blank dice on the internet and
painting your desired symbols by hand. There's also companies that can print
you the diece you want.

In fact, gaming lore says that in the early days of pen-and-paper RPGs, gamers
couldn't find anyone selling the polyhedral dice they needed, so they ordered
instead Platonic solids used for demonstration of geometric objects'
properties from school supplies retailers and filled in the numbers by hand,
as above. Which in no way means that any early d20s were missing a few 1's and
2's :|

------
metaphor
FYI Prof. Knuth presents the problem at 16:50 into the lecture[1] linked in
the blog, then shows off his Sinterit trinket at 18:30ish.

[1] [https://youtu.be/DjZB9HvddQk?t=1010](https://youtu.be/DjZB9HvddQk?t=1010)

------
jakozaur
Startup opportunity: Custom 3D printed dice. Pick any variation (e.g. less
boring than cube). Different text and order.

Excellent swag.

~~~
tannhaeuser
You're limited to the other Platonic solids [1] for dice having more than the
standard 6 faces if you want the odds to be the same, aren't you though?

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platonic_solid](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platonic_solid)

~~~
user51442
Just has to be face-transitive or isohedral for dice:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isohedral_figure](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isohedral_figure)

For example:
[https://mathsgear.co.uk/products/d120-dice](https://mathsgear.co.uk/products/d120-dice)

~~~
user51442
I should add that I have no affiliation with mathsgear, in fact, I was unaware
of their existence until just now. They seem to have lots of nice stuff:
[https://mathsgear.co.uk/collections/shapes](https://mathsgear.co.uk/collections/shapes)

------
limaoscarjuliet
As someone who brought a branch of a US company to Krakow (my birth place), I
can only say - great job and congrats!

------
rkachowski
What does it say in Knuth's response?

"Of course you could have used the ( <word here> font/foot???)"

~~~
mci
cmtt aka Computer Modern Typewriter, the same font as in the diagram from
TAOCP.

------
DoreenMichele
Very fun.

I didn't know what a Hamiltonian graph was:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamiltonian_path](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamiltonian_path)

------
unusximmortalis
:) beautiful story, thanks for sharing

