
The Tears of Donald Knuth - mrry
http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2015/1/181633-the-tears-of-donald-knuth/fulltext
======
WalterBright
I find that most history books on technology appear to focus on everything but
the technology. For example, books on the Wright bros. show very little
understanding of the technical achievement of the Wrights. They enumerate
places, dates, and trivia of their personal lives. History books on
locomotives contain arcana on the numbers painted on the side, production
figures, schedules, and very very little on the engineering advances. Same
with airplanes. Etc.

~~~
rst
Exceptions are rare enough to get called out for praise. A few:

Digital Apollo, by David Mindell (development of Apollo guidance and avionics
generally)

The Dream Machine by Mitchell Waldrop (technical development leading up to the
Arpanet, thence to the Internet)

Colossus, the secrets of Bletchley Park's codebreaking computers, by Jack
Copeland et al.

Unfortunately, there's a lot more of the technically unsophisticated junk that
Knuth is complaining about, and the excuses offered here rather badly miss the
point. ("The history of software is not the history of computer science". Yes,
and so? How does a history of software from which all technical detail has
been drained away contribute anything of value?)

~~~
WalterBright
"Ignition" by Clark is another exceptional exception.

~~~
termain
Ignition is fantastic and I'm continuously surprised how unknown it is amongst
the engine folk at MSFC.

~~~
boatzart
Wow, it's going for $3,115.00 (+ $3.99 shipping & handling) on Amazon. Put
this next to Sled Driver on my list of books to buy when I win the lottery.

~~~
utefan001
We all win the lottery.

[http://library.sciencemadness.org/library/books/ignition.pdf](http://library.sciencemadness.org/library/books/ignition.pdf)

[http://mirror.xwl.me/Sled%20Driver.pdf](http://mirror.xwl.me/Sled%20Driver.pdf)

~~~
mietek
Would you happen to have a copy of a similarly priced-out book, "How to Avoid
Huge Ships"?

~~~
utefan001
[https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-
instant&ion=1&e...](https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-
instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=How+to+Avoid+Huge+Ships+pdf&start=10)

Google is your friend and Bob's your uncle.

~~~
digi_owl
Seems the bots are getting damn creative. Perused the first few pdf links and
they were all "spam" pages in PDF form, with embedded download links i don't
dear follow.

------
mcguire
[1] seems to be the paper Knuth is discussing. [2] is the link for the IEEE,
but you're not getting the full text from them. (Weirdly, the top hit for
Cambell-Kelly himself is [3], which only has a link to track his research
proposals. Warwick's keeping their eyes on the ball, I guess.)

[1]
[http://www.thecorememory.com/THTHS.pdf](http://www.thecorememory.com/THTHS.pdf)

[2]
[http://www.computer.org/csdl/mags/an/2007/04/man2007040040-a...](http://www.computer.org/csdl/mags/an/2007/04/man2007040040-abs.html)

[3]
[http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/dcs/people/martin_campbell...](http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/dcs/people/martin_campbell-
kelly/)

~~~
Animats
[1] does seem to be the paper of interest. It's not clear what Knuth is
unhappy about. Campbell-Kelly's big complaint seems to be that the early
history of computing mentions machines, languages, and algorithms too much,
and doesn't discuss applications and users enough. That's a reasonable comment
from a historian.

When Knuth wrote Vol. I, "Fundamental Algorithms", there were almost no
computer books published other than manufacturer manuals and a few
introductory programming language books. Knuth's series is really a history of
algorithms, with each one traced back to its originator. The early history is
on the record.

We're now inundated with corporate histories, mostly of applications
companies. There's a glut of CEO biographies. There are academic papers on the
history of the spreadsheet. There's no longer a lack of history on the user-
facing side.

This comes with progress in the field. A book-length history of the electric
motor, from Henry to Edison to Sprague to Tesla and up to modern brushless
motors, would be interesting - to a very small number of people. Popular
articles on motors can be found in mainstream publications from 1880 to 1925
or so. After that, they were just routine items, not newsworthy. Low-level
algorithms now belong in that category. A few people still have to study how
to do hash tables, just as a few people have to study rotating electrical
machinery theory and design new motors.

The important thing is not to lose the history. Campbell-Kelly says "we can't
save everything". Well, we can. Disk space is cheap. Future generations (of
humans and machines) can re-summarize it.

~~~
dalke
What I've seen is that history is saved, and even accessible, but mythology is
often stronger than history. Here on HN I've seen people say that Apple was
the origin of the garage startup, when that goes back to at least HP, or the
Apple was the inventor of profit sharing, when that was a Valley practice
predating even Intel. Elsewhere I see people say that PARC invented the mouse,
when that came out of SRI, or that Xerox flubbed on the laser printer, when
laser xerography was making them over a billion dollars a year in the late
1980s. I see people sell Agile using waterfall as the strawman opponent, as if
those were the only two possibilities. (See
[http://www.infoq.com/articles/bossavit-agile-ten-years-
on](http://www.infoq.com/articles/bossavit-agile-ten-years-on) for one
commentary.)

I personally think there's a rebranding of Linked Data as a way to rescue the
real-world failures of the Semantic Web dream by saying that all interlinked
databases are part of Linked Data and ergo the Semantic Web, and my limited
research of the historical record backs that up.

But this knowledge doesn't really affect how most people do business now.
(Though we end up with highly paid consultants who peddle a false mythos
rather than paying historians for the real information.) It's mostly relevant
for those points that Knuth enumerated, which are superb humanistic goals that
few beyond the academically secure or retired can afford to advance.

While much can be saved, many things are only in people's heads, or in their
personal effects. Doing that history now, rather than waiting, means that more
of those can be recorded for the future.

~~~
cbd1984
And there's other examples of that, less obvious but more pervasive. For
example, every single 'first' is mired in definitional issues which all serve
to recast previous things in the light of more modern technology. It does a
disservice to those older things to only view them through the lens of what we
have now.

It's hard to fight because it is rarely based on outright lies, per se, just
pervasive misinterpretations which cast things in a false light. Disputing it
makes _you_ look like a nitpicking fool picking at things which barely even
exist, but accepting it makes history seem like a teleological process,
inevitably aimed at today like an arrow aimed at a target, with all previous
processes culminating in what we have now.

------
mcguire
" _So why is the history of computer science not being written \\(in the
volume it deserves\\), or \\(the manner favored by Knuth\\)?_ "

\\\1 Too many principals of said history are still alive, still influential,
and still kicking too much to allow much in the way of historical analysis. It
is much easier for a historian to stick with a subject where those who
remember events are safely dead.

\\\2 It would be improper to expect anyone to write informatively about ideas
they cannot themselves understand. And it would be improper (as the author of
the article writes) to expect a historian to understand an unrelated technical
field.

This is unfortunate, because "history", the preferences of historians
notwithstanding, is the story of technology. I do not believe there is any
great difference between any of us and some goober fingerpainting on the walls
of a cave.

~~~
graycat
Goober had to have been making good, even crucial, use of his mental abilities
or we would not have ours.

So, what the heck was Goober doing with his abilities that were crucial? He
found the cave, kept out animals that could hurt him, built a fire to keep it
warm, built families, found food and water, make tools, weapons, and clothes,
etc. Apparently found good uses for his brain.

~~~
jacquesm
And found the leisure time, materials and learned the skills required required
to do some fingerpainting on the side (assuming the subject of the painting
did not have practical or religious purposes).

------
pmcjones
For scans of much of the historic software source code that Knuth mentions
near the end of the video, see:

[http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/Knuth_Don_...](http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/Knuth_Don_X4100/PDF_index/KnuthDigitalArchive-
Index.html)

------
gdwatson
What would it take to get Computer Science departments to view the history of
the discipline as an important issue to be dealt with inside the department?
Surely the author's right that if the technical history of a discipline is to
be done in the way Knuth wants, and I think that is incredibly valuable, it
needs to be done by those who understand the discipline.

But can C.S. departments manage that as an institutional matter?

------
yarapavan
Here is the web/non-mobile version (OP posted mobile version):

[http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2015/1/181633-the-tears-of-
don...](http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2015/1/181633-the-tears-of-donald-
knuth/fulltext)

------
cryptophreak
Mirror?

~~~
UNIXgod
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2015/1/181633-the-
tears-of-donald-knuth/fulltext)

------
vvpan
Non-mobile version has readable font size and color.

[http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2015/1/181633-the-tears-of-
don...](http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2015/1/181633-the-tears-of-donald-
knuth/fulltext)

~~~
jackmaney
Holy crap, thank you. The article linked by OP was hurting my eyes. Who
creates a website where the body has no margin? And light-gray text on a white
background? What were they thinking?

~~~
joshuacc
Lack of margin actually helps readability on older mobile devices. Not sure
why they'd go with those colors, though.

