
Don Knuth and the Art of Computer Programming: The Interview - ohjeez
https://www.simple-talk.com/opinion/opinion-pieces/don-knuth-and-the-art-of-computer-programming-the-interview/
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geerlingguy

      I guess I do tend to use systems in unexpected ways, and I get some satisfaction
      when this reveals a flaw. For example, I remember having fun while visiting my
      sister and playing with a `shoot-em-up' game that my nephew showed me.
    
      Since I'm kind of a pacifist, I tried shooting bullets at the wall, instead of
      trying to kill the hidden attackers. Sure enough, I could spell my name on that
      wall, by making bullet holes in an appropriate pattern. But later when I came back
      to that same position, after wandering around further in the game, my name was gone!
      I think that was a bug in the software.
    

I love this. Especially the fact that he wrote was probably doing the only
thing he wanted to do in the game, and was foiled by the fact that the game
programmers didn't dedicate extra memory to saving environmental damage
throughout a level.

~~~
milliams
I doubt it was a bug. The developers will have set either a time limit on each
decal or will have a maximum number of decals that can exist in any level.

~~~
geerlingguy
It's definitely designed that way (in Halo 1 on my Mac, you could watch while
shooting at something, and see the old damage go away in real time after a
couple magazines of ammo were expended).

Modern games on modern systems are getting better, but there's always a limit
as to how much data will fit into RAM during a given scenario/level while
still keeping everything else running smoothly.

~~~
DannoHung
I was really disappointed with something like this in a game I was playing
last week. In The Unfinished Swan, after you get a certain number of bonus
points, you unlock a power that lets time freeze for the objects you throw in
game so you can have tons of objects queued up to go all over the place when
you unfreeze.

What I was trying to do was use the frozen in space objects to sort of paint
in mid-air the area I was in. Unfortunately after about a 100 or so, the game
removed the oldest dropped object with each new one placed.

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beat
I'm reminded of Knuth's six character critique of C++...

a < b > c;

(from Dr. Dobbs, many years ago)

Can you determine the function of that statement without knowing the types of
the variables? No? That's because there's a parse problem in C++. If they had
only used, say, [< and >] rather than < and > for template declaration, it
could have parsed cleanly. Overloading operators for unrelated functionality
is a dangerous and usually unnecessary practice.

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Tycho
Funny how extraordinary people often seem to have extraordinary hobbies:

 _The irony is that computer science nearly lost Knuth to its ranks because of
his love of music (his house is built around a two-storey pipe organ that he
designed himself) and says he intends to return to it once he has completed
the expected seven volumes of ‘The Art of Computer Science’._

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Ixiaus
I'm (slowly) moving through ACP at this time. Definitely not night-stand
reading! The clarity of his thought is impressive and shines through on the
pages of his books; reading and doing the exercises in his books has made a
noticeable impact on my own thinking, not just in my Mathematics or
programming!

7 Volumes though! I've got the boxed four set, at the rate with which I'm
progressing I'm sure he'll have the other three finished, lol.

~~~
beat
The question is, will he be done with The Art of Computer Programming before
George R.R. Martin is done with The Song of Ice and Fire?

~~~
vl
He would be if he would sell to HBO as well - Martin is on the hook, they are
going to make the show with or without him.

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mutagen
There's a fantastic video autobiography of Donald Knuth [1] that includes a
good transcript for people like me who would rather read. This has been
discussed [2] on HN previously and would be one of the links I wouldn't mind
seeing again. In searching for previous discussions I found a 73 page
transcript of an interview of Knuth by Edward Feigenbaum of Stanford that will
likely eat up part of my afternoon.

[1]
[http://www.webofstories.com/play/donald.knuth/1](http://www.webofstories.com/play/donald.knuth/1)
[2]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3389980](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3389980)
[3]
[http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/Oral_Histo...](http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/Oral_History/Knuth_Don_1/Knuth_Don.oral_history.2007.102658053_all.pdf)

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weeber

      I think existing incentives are working fine, except of  
      course that I wish more people would discover the 
      advantages of literate programming. 
    

The problem, is, in my opinion is that programmer believes in the beauty of
code itself, and literate didn't allow to write beautiful code easily. It
helps to write beautiful documentation. Maybe a tool allowing literate and
inverse literate programming to propagate modifications in code or in
documentation on both directions may allow a better adoption?

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dccoolgai
I always love reading about Knuth. What a great guy.

TAOCP:Computer Science::Gray's Anatomy:Medicine

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meshko
I bet the game he is talking about is Duke Nukem 3D and he is wrong. Saving
the bullet holes only long enough for them to be enjoyable but not long enough
to run out of memory was completely awesome touch.

~~~
gohrt
> he is wrong. Saving the bullet holes only long enough for them to be
> enjoyable

They weren't saved long enough to be enjoyable to Don.

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rplacd
How strange - the times I get to keep to myself I go wild with context-
switching.

~~~
e3pi
Do you prefer freedom or order? Do you prefer one way to do a single thing, or
a thousand ways to reach the same goal?

(a) Freedom AND order. (b) I guess I prefer maybe three ways, having different
characteristics, together with the knowledge of how to convert each of them
into the other two.

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af3
living legend!

