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My Knuth checks amount to a total account balance of 0x$b.40 at his "Bank of San Seriffe" (the equivalent of eleven "errors" and two "suggestions") — mostly acc
by svat 2y ago
My Knuth checks amount to a total account balance of 0x$b.40 at his "Bank of San Seriffe" (the equivalent of eleven "errors" and two "suggestions") — mostly accumulated over a short period several years ago.
Previously, I had the impression that Knuth was some magical figure of perfection. What I realized was that the truth was more surprising: he makes the same kinds and the same frequency of errors as anyone else (in fact likely more, because every page is packed with a lot of detail); what sets him apart is that he cares so deeply about getting everything right — he has basically invited a DDoS on his time and attention, where every person in the world is strongly encouraged to write to him with errors on every page that he has ever written over several decades — and he does go back and look at all of them carefully (example: https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/18117/which-computers-did-donald-knuth-mix-together-to-get-mix/18176#comment66965_18176 https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/18117/whi...); and despite all this he somehow continues to function, producing new pages at a nonzero rate. After some experience with his responses (handwritten with pencil on a printout of the emails sent to him), I came away even more impressed.
- zoky 2y ago> he makes the same kinds and the same frequency of errors as anyone else Putting this here because I don’t know where else to tell this story and I simply have to share: I flew into Munich a few months ago, and since I have an EU passport I was able to use the shorter self-scan line for EU citizens at passport control. In front of me was an older couple who was having trouble with getting their passports to scan. I noticed they had US passports, so I politely informed the gentleman that he was in the wrong line. He turned around and thanked me, and that’s when I noticed the guy looked exactly like Donald Knuth! Before I could compose myself enough to say anything though, he and his wife had left to find the correct line. Obviously I couldn’t be sure it was him, but I checked Knuth’s public schedule and he was apparently speaking at some conference in Venice about two weeks later, so I’m guessing he decided to come a bit early and enjoy a vacation before the conference. So yeah, I’m like 99% sure I technically corrected an error by Donald Knuth, but unfortunately I missed out on my reward check. Didn’t even get a selfie with him.
- abhgh 2y agoI have mentioned this elsewhere online but I was once attending a talk in the computer history museum for which I had turned up early. An elderly gentleman took his seat right before me - it took me a while to process that it was Knuth (in reality, it was less to do with processing and more with accepting!). Somewhat recently we spotted him at a Hitchcock movie festival at Palo Alto, which my wife and I were attending. Random run-ins are surreal :-)
- oefrha 2y agoBack when I was at Stanford a decade ago, I spotted him biking to/from Green Library quite a few times. You can probably run into him with some regularity if you make a habit of going to said library, assuming his routine hasn’t changed much ;)
- abhgh 2y agoOh thats a cool fact to know! Thanks.
- rnewme 2y agoAt risk of sounding negative, I'm glad you didn't get to pester old man with a selfie.
- zoky 2y agoI wouldn’t have seriously asked him for a selfie while we were both trying to get through passport control after a 12-hour flight. It’s just a little bit of a bummer that I have no way of confirming that I actually did randomly run into Donald-Freaking-Knuth in the Munich airport. Doubly so because most people who I relate this story to have absolutely no clue who Donald-Freaking-Knuth even is, so it’s just completely lost on them.
- weinzierl 2y agoI attended one of his MMIX lectures in Munich two decades ago and he mentioned that he was going to visit a friend later, so I guess he might have contacts in Munich. Speaking of errors, in the lecture he once forgot to save a file in Emacs and was confused about the compilation result briefly. Made him very relatable.