7 ms·

A few years ago I had the pleasure of meeting Knuth in his home, my wife was doing some photography for him. He took me to his room and showed me his setup, he

A few years ago I had the pleasure of meeting Knuth in his home, my wife was doing some photography for him. He took me to his room and showed me his setup, he was researching Soduku algorithms at the time. His hands were blisteringly quick, moving between EMacs panes, triggering evaluations and printing of results, as fast as any 20 year old. In his 80s , he hasn’t seemed to suffer any mental decline. I started talking to him about some of the latest AI research and he mentioned the papers authors, he had already read them! Not only is he still very productive at 84, but he has not ossified into one particular subject but he continues to keep abreast of other related fields. He also played his huge pipe organ for us, he was gracious, humble, down to earth, truly a treasure. I only wish he could live another hundred years, selfishly so I could see Volumes 5, 6, and 7 of Art of Computer Programming finished. I should not with some sadness that COVID hit not long after and that year we lost a number of other luminaries in the field like Jon Conway.

pksebben 4y ago
may we all age so gracefully. perhaps part of the secret is to work like Don.
- stephendause 4y ago
  There may be something to that, at least according to one study. Specifically, this article [1] indicates "embracing new mental challenges may be the key to preserving both brain tissue and brain function." [1] https://www.health.harvard.edu/healthy-aging/what-does-it-take-to-be-a-super-ager https://www.health.harvard.edu/healthy-aging/what-does-it-ta...
- justinjlynn 4y ago
  I'd imagine it's mostly a question of having the freedom to be able to work upon subjects which very much interest you, independently and on your own schedule, without much outside pressure or coercion to produce tangible results that are useful to anyone but yourself.
User23 4y ago
> moving between EMacs panes Well, the editor wars are over folks. More seriously, Don Knuth is a treasure. One of the coolest things about computing science is how all the greats in the field are either alive, or within the living memory of people who are.
- cromwellian 4y ago
  These are the photos my wife took at his home. https://www.quantamagazine.org/computer-scientist-donald-knuth-cant-stop-telling-stories-20200416/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/computer-scientist-donald-knu... Like the 5th picture down you can see him standing (he uses a standing desk!) and if you blow up the screen, you can see part of an emacs window on the left hand side. I believe he also was using emacs shell windows as well, but not 100% sure. Direct Link: https://d2r55xnwy6nx47.cloudfront.net/uploads/2020/04/DK_VC_2K_01.jpg https://d2r55xnwy6nx47.cloudfront.net/uploads/2020/04/DK_VC_... I can't emphasize enough how incredibly nice and welcoming he is. He is bursting with enthusiasm for computers, and my wife and his wife had to almost restrain him so he would sit for his pictures, because he would start talking to me again about computer related stuff.
  - jordigh 4y ago
    Hard to tell at this resolution, but it looks like he's using a fairly bare X setup with a tiling window manager and only one Emacs frame on the left. The colours and layout on Emacs look like org-mode. Does he write with org-mode? I would have expected him to write bare TeX, of course. Maybe he's doing something else with org-mode. He's got Xeyes on the right, and the shell windows could conceivably be Emacs too, but if so, he's customised them to remove the minibuffer.
    - r85804306610 4y ago
      his fvwm config is public, and there's a screenshot floating around, if you want to take a closer look https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/screen.jpeg https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/screen.jpeg the only mistake you won't be able to correct from observing screenshot is the "look like org-mode" thing. it's https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/programs/color-mode.el https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/programs/color-mo... minor mode which lets you highlight arbitrary lines in a buffer.
hintymad 4y ago
I also noticed smart people type really fast (if they can touch type) and can switch between multiple windows/tabs fast too. It's not because their fingers move faster than normal people, but because their mind moves smoothly so they can produce a long string of command with stopping to think. > as fast as any 20 year old. I I certainly hope so. Though I think it's more likely that Knuth can be as fast as other 20-year olds, but not as the 20-year old of himself.
- klik99 4y ago
  Interesting - I do this but I learned the skill from sight reading music scores - you have to be playing several bars behind what you’re reading so the skill is in going into autopilot with your fingers as you read. No small coincidence then that Knuth is an organist
  - gumby 4y ago
    > No small coincidence then that Knuth is an organist Also great on the harpsichord and piano.
    - tartoran 4y ago
      Id love to listen to Knuth perform his instruments. Can this be found on youtube?
      - offByJuan 4y ago
        Just search Knuth organ on youtube an you get several hits
- eichin 4y ago
  As someone whose computing career was improved by learning to touch-type in grade school (Mom had been a secretary, saw that these "personal" computers had keyboards, and bludgeoned the high school to let me in to the summer-school typing class) it's not actually the speed that matters - though that does certainly impress people - it's that it's "automatic". If you're not thinking about letters and where they are, you aren't distracted from the entire sentence (or function) you're holding in your head - it just pours out through your hands into the machine. (Sometimes I joke about how my hands know emacs, not my brain - but if someone asks me what keys I hit for something, my fingers move and then I work backwards from that.) (And if you're collecting correlations - I have no musical performance talent at all and have spent maybe 10 hours total poking at musical keyboards - for me, typing is all typing, I expect musical keyboarding is a related but parallel thing, not the same thing.)
314 4y ago
Just think how much more he could have created with vi ;)
- belter 4y ago
  He is only using EMacs as an OS....
jfk13 4y ago
A colleague and I also had the delight of visiting him, quite a few years ago now. I'd been doing some unusual stuff with TeX, and had been in touch and showed him some examples of our work. He had recently been working on 3:16 and showed us some of the original calligraphy that he had at home at the time. What a lovely man, as well as being a multi-talented genius.
strikelaserclaw 4y ago
Imagine Don being your interviewer at a FAANG company.

pksebben 4y ago

may we all age so gracefully. perhaps part of the secret is to work like Don.

stephendause 4y ago
There may be something to that, at least according to one study. Specifically, this article [1] indicates "embracing new mental challenges may be the key to preserving both brain tissue and brain function." [1] https://www.health.harvard.edu/healthy-aging/what-does-it-take-to-be-a-super-ager https://www.health.harvard.edu/healthy-aging/what-does-it-ta...
justinjlynn 4y ago
I'd imagine it's mostly a question of having the freedom to be able to work upon subjects which very much interest you, independently and on your own schedule, without much outside pressure or coercion to produce tangible results that are useful to anyone but yourself.

User23 4y ago

> moving between EMacs panes Well, the editor wars are over folks. More seriously, Don Knuth is a treasure. One of the coolest things about computing science is how all the greats in the field are either alive, or within the living memory of people who are.

cromwellian 4y ago
These are the photos my wife took at his home. https://www.quantamagazine.org/computer-scientist-donald-knuth-cant-stop-telling-stories-20200416/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/computer-scientist-donald-knu... Like the 5th picture down you can see him standing (he uses a standing desk!) and if you blow up the screen, you can see part of an emacs window on the left hand side. I believe he also was using emacs shell windows as well, but not 100% sure. Direct Link: https://d2r55xnwy6nx47.cloudfront.net/uploads/2020/04/DK_VC_2K_01.jpg https://d2r55xnwy6nx47.cloudfront.net/uploads/2020/04/DK_VC_... I can't emphasize enough how incredibly nice and welcoming he is. He is bursting with enthusiasm for computers, and my wife and his wife had to almost restrain him so he would sit for his pictures, because he would start talking to me again about computer related stuff.
- jordigh 4y ago
  Hard to tell at this resolution, but it looks like he's using a fairly bare X setup with a tiling window manager and only one Emacs frame on the left. The colours and layout on Emacs look like org-mode. Does he write with org-mode? I would have expected him to write bare TeX, of course. Maybe he's doing something else with org-mode. He's got Xeyes on the right, and the shell windows could conceivably be Emacs too, but if so, he's customised them to remove the minibuffer.
  - r85804306610 4y ago
    his fvwm config is public, and there's a screenshot floating around, if you want to take a closer look https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/screen.jpeg https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/screen.jpeg the only mistake you won't be able to correct from observing screenshot is the "look like org-mode" thing. it's https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/programs/color-mode.el https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/programs/color-mo... minor mode which lets you highlight arbitrary lines in a buffer.

hintymad 4y ago

I also noticed smart people type really fast (if they can touch type) and can switch between multiple windows/tabs fast too. It's not because their fingers move faster than normal people, but because their mind moves smoothly so they can produce a long string of command with stopping to think. > as fast as any 20 year old. I I certainly hope so. Though I think it's more likely that Knuth can be as fast as other 20-year olds, but not as the 20-year old of himself.

klik99 4y ago
Interesting - I do this but I learned the skill from sight reading music scores - you have to be playing several bars behind what you’re reading so the skill is in going into autopilot with your fingers as you read. No small coincidence then that Knuth is an organist
- gumby 4y ago
  > No small coincidence then that Knuth is an organist Also great on the harpsichord and piano.
  - tartoran 4y ago
    Id love to listen to Knuth perform his instruments. Can this be found on youtube?
    - offByJuan 4y ago
      Just search Knuth organ on youtube an you get several hits
eichin 4y ago
As someone whose computing career was improved by learning to touch-type in grade school (Mom had been a secretary, saw that these "personal" computers had keyboards, and bludgeoned the high school to let me in to the summer-school typing class) it's not actually the speed that matters - though that does certainly impress people - it's that it's "automatic". If you're not thinking about letters and where they are, you aren't distracted from the entire sentence (or function) you're holding in your head - it just pours out through your hands into the machine. (Sometimes I joke about how my hands know emacs, not my brain - but if someone asks me what keys I hit for something, my fingers move and then I work backwards from that.) (And if you're collecting correlations - I have no musical performance talent at all and have spent maybe 10 hours total poking at musical keyboards - for me, typing is all typing, I expect musical keyboarding is a related but parallel thing, not the same thing.)

314 4y ago

Just think how much more he could have created with vi ;)

belter 4y ago
He is only using EMacs as an OS....

jfk13 4y ago

A colleague and I also had the delight of visiting him, quite a few years ago now. I'd been doing some unusual stuff with TeX, and had been in touch and showed him some examples of our work. He had recently been working on 3:16 and showed us some of the original calligraphy that he had at home at the time. What a lovely man, as well as being a multi-talented genius.

strikelaserclaw 4y ago

Imagine Don being your interviewer at a FAANG company.