
Donald Knuth never told Steve Jobs that he was full of shit - pkrumins
http://www.catonmat.net/blog/don-knuth-steve-jobs/
======
lkozma
On a related note, I received a (regular, handwritten) mail from Donald Knuth
today, in reply to an email in which I reported some (what I thought were)
small errors in TAOCP (which turned out not to be errors afterall - so no
reward check for me :).

I found one of his comments on my email funny. I started by saying "I am
reading your book with great interest, at the same time hunting for small
errors." He wrote next to it: "so why don't you start hunting for the big
ones?". Inspiring on many levels :)

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bugsy
In the video that is found at the cited link, Knuth doesn't clearly say there
that the incident didn't happen.

He says that he gets asked about this story and he met both Jobs and Gates
only a few times and that in each case he was more impressed by them than they
were of him.

The story is definitely false because Knuth is a very polite and modest person
who has never been the sort of person that says "you're full of shit" to
anyone.

More conclusively, another person in this thread pointed to the letter from
Knuth in his own handwriting in which he says the Jobs story is untrue:

[http://markharrison.net/stackoverflow/knuth/knuth-
page2-enla...](http://markharrison.net/stackoverflow/knuth/knuth-
page2-enlarged.jpg)

~~~
brisance
I think great scientists and thinkers wouldn't tell another person that
they're "full of shit", just in case they themselves are wrong. Scientists
tend to be tolerant, sometimes to a fault, of differing views. Their training
demands of it. And that's why we have that evolution vs pseudo-science thing
today.

~~~
synotic
I think this might be overly optimistic. Really smart people can also have
really large egos and no patience for common courtesy. When they're sure of
something, they have no problem calling someone out on it.

~~~
wisty
Talented people tend to get misjudged a lot. Lots of scientists have big egos,
but that can go a few was. A big ego can make you humble and accepting of
others (if you reserve your harshest criticism for yourself) or a real prick.

Some people want to be liked, some people want to be respected, and some
people just want to be left alone.

------
prpon
A story from meeting Donald Knuth. During the dotcom days, our startup team
was sent to meet Donald Knuth for due diligence by some VC. Our startup was
doing Location based stuff before it was cool. Our CTO went on and on about
all the potential applications of location based services. Prof. Knuth cut him
off in the middle and said, 'You would use all these services because you are
part of the lunatic fringe'. :)

------
kunjaan
On a related note, I read somewhere that Godel was the only person Russell
believed had read and understood "Principia Mathematica" besides the author
themselves.

~~~
marchdown
There's Whitehead, who co-authored "Principia Mathematica", and then there's
Wittgenstein and Wiener, who offered a fairly thorough critique. Doubtful that
they didn't understand it. I can't hunt down the exact quote right now, but
AFAIK, when asked how many people have read and fully appreciated Principia,
Russell's answer was "perhaps a dozen".

~~~
mathwrap
Are there any good examples of the critiques of Wittgenstein and Wiener of
Principia Mathematica?

The Wikipedia article for PM only mentions Wittgenstein and separately a
'shortcut' from Wiener. I would like to know if there are longer writings
somewhere.

~~~
marchdown
I don't remember reading anything specific by Wiener, so that might have been
from one of his talks or /Cybernetics/ or something, as for Wittgenstein, I'd
look in the blue book. If it's important I can try and track down the
references later. The point was, inscrutability of Principia is largely a
myth. Sure, it is both nigh-unreadable _and_ nobody actually uses the logical
language developed therein, but it can be understood, it's simply not useful
enough to compensate for verbosity. For a modern-day example, look at Coq. It
is painfully verbose even after many iterations of refactoring.

~~~
mathwrap
I'm an armchair mathematician currently but I have _high_ aspirations for my
math career so it's not really important but if you have free time for
definite references it would be much appreciated.

Thanks for the references so far. I'll look into Cybernetics. I already know
of Coq but haven't looked that close, I'll make a note to investigate.

------
eli
I'm not even sure I get it. Is the joke supposed to be that Jobs isn't a real
programmer, or that no one can get through Kunth's books?

~~~
cruise02
The joke was that no one actually reads TAOCP. It was rumored that Knuth once
described them as the "most purchased, least read" computer science books.

That rumor was also thoroughly debunked, here:
<http://markharrison.net/stackoverflow/knuth/>

~~~
halo
>The joke was that no one actually reads TAOCP.

While true, what surprised me is that Knuth's books are much more readable
than you might expect from their reputation. TAOCP is a far cry from dry terse
impenetrable tomes like Rudin.

~~~
tptacek
One further than this: every time --- _every time_ \--- I sit down with TAOCP,
even on stuff I assume is going to be basic, I learn something awesome. It is
one of the densest amounts of awesome per page of any book I've ever seen.

And I am very not crazy math guy, too.

~~~
wglb
Check out Volume 4.

------
sgt
I never believed it anyway, it didn't feel plausible at all.

------
solarlion
ever the gentleman, he ducked the question.

------
bonch
Another one that people repeat is that Bill Gates said 640kb out to be enough
for anybody. He says he never said it, but even if he did, at the time he
supposedly made the statement, it was an accurate one given the technology
available.

------
horofox
Steve Jobs don't know how to program probably. Once I've watched a video of
Steve Woz on youtube saying he(Jobs) didn't knew a shit about making
computers(hardware), but he is very talent at being the CEO or something like
that. So it's very unlikely that he knows how to program.

I know that microsoft employees, including Bill Gates have read some Knuth,
I've read that in a book of Bill Gates.

~~~
whyenot
When Steve Jobs was 13, he called up Bob Hewlitt to ask for some spare parts
for a frequency counter he was working on. He worked at HP, was a technician
at Atari, and attended the Homebrew Computer Club. He does know about
electronics, and it doesn't seem like too much of a stretch to me that he
might actually know a thing or two about programming as well.

~~~
dvdhsu
He actually called Bill Hewlett [1], one of the founders of Hewlett and
Packard [2].

1\.
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=g...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=gtuz5OmOh_M#at=118)
2\. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Reddington_Hewlett>

~~~
whyenot
You're right. Bill, not Bob. Thank you for the correction :)

