
When Steve Jobs met Don Knuth - nickb
http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Close_Encounters_of_the_Steve_Kind.txt
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JesseAldridge
Note the comment:

from Mike Boich: I was actually present for this. My recollection was that Don
Knuth's response was more along the lines of "I seriously doubt that". (It was
still quite amusing though!)

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gaius
I imagine Woz would have gotten a very different response!

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jyothi
Guess Knuth bluntly meant that Jobs was lying. Hardly any one could have
managed to digest "all" his books.

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helveticaman
I think there are people that can read and digest all his books, especially in
SV, but Knuth would have known about them already or something.

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michaelneale
I am sure I have heard this before as an anecdote, not involving Steve Jobs (I
recall it was someone at a church that Don Knuth happened to attend).

I am too lazy to check snopes for this though.

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jhancock
any info on if this is true? also, did Knuth mean Job's was full of it that
"he read all his books" or just full of it in general? ;)

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antiform
Maybe Knuth was more of a rebel back in the day, but somehow I can't imagine
him having that sort of response.

In Randall Munroe's Authors@Google talk
[<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJOS0sV2a24>], Don Knuth asks him a question
at ~21:30 and at ~25:30 Randall asks Knuth about this very anecdote. Knuth's
response is "I've been told this story a number of times...but I was impressed
by him more than he was impressed by me."

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newt0311
"You're full of shit."

Which great innovator isn't?

Seriously, think about what goes into it. You have to believe that you are
capable of changing the reigning viewpoint, that almost _everybody_ else in
the field is wrong. Without an epic ego, great innovators would never get
started.

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hugh
Your comment seems to be more relevant to your own issues than to the actual
story, but let me just point out that the "Steve Jobs" character in the story
(let's ignore the question of whether or not it's actually true) isn't
demonstrating an "epic ego" at all. He's being cloyingly sycophantic.

What does a man with an epic ego say when he meets Donald Knuth? Probably "Hi,
nice to meet you".

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shutter
I love that quote.

