
The Art of Computer Programming, Volume 4, Fascicle 5 - taeric
https://smile.amazon.com/Art-Computer-Programming-Fascicle-Preliminaries/dp/0134671791
======
sytelus
Interesting general tidbits from
[http://carmenere.ucsd.edu/drichert/reference_docs/Mathematic...](http://carmenere.ucsd.edu/drichert/reference_docs/Mathematical_Writing-
Knuth.pdf):

"First he showed us a letter from Bob Floyd. The letter opened by saying ‘Don,
Please stop using so many exclamation points!’ and closed with at least five
exclamation points. After receiving this letter he looked in The Art of
Computer Programming and found about two exclamation points per page. (Among
the other biographical tidbits we learned at this class were that Don went to
secretarial school, types 80 words per minute, and once knew two kinds of
shorthand.)

...

Upon receiving a question from the audience concerning how many times he
actually rewrites something, Don told us (part of) his usual rewrite sequence:
His first copy is written in pencil. Some people compose at a terminal, but
Don says, “The speed at which I write by hand is almost perfectly synchronized
with the speed at which I think. I type faster than I think so I have to stop,
and that interrupts the flow.

...

Don, obviously a fan of rewriting in general, told us that he knows of many
computer programs that were improved by scrapping everything after six months
and starting from scratch. He said that this exact approach was used at
Burroughs on their Algol compiler in 1960 and the result was what Don
considers to be one of the best computer programs he has ever seen.

...

The last part of class was spent discussing the font used in the coming book:
Euler. The Euler typeface was designed by Hermann Zapf (“probably the greatest
living type designer”) and is an especially appropriate font to use in a book
that is all about Euler’s work. ”

~~~
taeric
I'll have to dive in this one more. First pass thoughts:

I love the implication that he thinks slower than 80 wpm. Sounds absurdly
unlikely.

I also love the idea of throwing it away. Never fully been brave enough to do
that, though. Nor have I ever seen it done. Getting closer as I get older. By
coming up with a language for what I'm doing, I'm free to throw out how I've
done it, so long as I honor the language I left behind. (Curious if this is
the gem of dsl stuff. Just another way of saying to focus on the api.)

The shorthand, of course, complicates this. Does he do the first pass in
shorthand? Even a mix of long and shorthand? That increases the writing speed
considerably.

~~~
steev
I don't think he's saying he literally thinks slower than 80 WPM. I interpret
this to mean the rate at which he writes his thoughts down matches the amount
of time it takes him to think of what he wants to write next or how he wants
to phrase the next sentence. When I am writing research papers there are long
pauses between sentences as I think of what I want to say next or how I want
to phrase the sentence. That doesn't mean there are long pauses between
sentences in my thoughts throughout the day.

~~~
taeric
I don't see the distinction you are making. I get that it is not a constant
stream of words at that rate, but you still described thinking at roughly
eighty words a minute. Right?

And I have no clue how that actually stacks up. Eighty looks like a small
number, but that is more than this whole post.

------
guiambros
Here's his 25th annual Christmas celebration, at Stanford yesterday:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_kd7xE-
HqA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_kd7xE-HqA)

------
jammygit
I have volume 1 and I found it hard to get into. I think it presupposes a few
concepts that my university skipped - eg, the correct way to approach writing
a computer science proof (it comes up really early on in the exercises).

I often wonder what else comp sci students learned that us software
engineering students did not. All I know for sure is that we did a ton more
testing, architecture, hardware, math, and requirements. I think we did more
applied programming too, based on trying to work with comp sci students who
write custom sorting algorithms instead of thinking to type .sort(). We did
not learn a ton of algorithms though

~~~
lonelappde
Almost no schools, even great ones, teach informal (professional) proofs, even
in CS and pure math. They expect you to learn by osmosis.

~~~
drallison
Interested in proofs and proving? Read _Social Processes and Proofs of
Theorems and Programs_ by Richard A. De Millo (Georgia Institute of
Technology) and Richard J. Lipton and Alan J. Perlis (Yale University) given
at POPL3. [https://ucsd-pl.github.io/cse-130-230/fa18/papers/demillo-
so...](https://ucsd-pl.github.io/cse-130-230/fa18/papers/demillo-social-
processes.ipdf)

The peer review process often seems to fail when proofs are involved--
reviewers often skip over the proofs because reading and checking is hard
work.

~~~
mindcrime
FYI, that link gave me a 404. I found what appears to be the same paper here:
[https://www.cs.umd.edu/~gasarch/BLOGPAPERS/social.pdf](https://www.cs.umd.edu/~gasarch/BLOGPAPERS/social.pdf)

