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"Out of the ~250 programs I wrote last year, 2-3 would have benefited from being written in a functional style." Donald Knuth

brainflake 14y ago
And out of the ~250 programs that Knuth wrote last year, 2-3 would have solved a similar problem that your typical professional programmer would solve.
wakeup 14y ago
You should go read some Donald Knuth source code, or use a Donald Knuth Design (try TeX). Seriously I love this crazy guy, incredibly smart, but he can't code _properly_ for his life. This sums it up: He applied his intelligence in unconventional ways, winning a contest when he was in eighth grade by finding over 4,500 words that could be formed from the letters in "Ziegler's Giant Bar"; the judges had only about 2,500 words on their master list. This won him a television set for his school and a candy bar for everyone in his class. [Wikipedia]
baar 14y ago
a) Knuth does not solve "typical" problems. b) Despite his obvious knowledge about algorithms and data structures, Knuth may not be able to see advantages that many others see. EDIT: Oh, and what is the source of that quote?
jeffdavis 14y ago
Functional programming strikes me as most useful for software engineering. I'm not sure how that applies to Knuth, but my understanding is that most of the programs he writes are more oriented towards computer science than software engineering.
krichman 14y ago
One of the things Knuth is famous for is writing a lengthy program for word counts that was equivalent to no more than 6 lines of shell script. I highly doubt that he's wrong regarding his own programs, but it's most certainly wrong for the majority of programmers. PS if we're going to appeal to authority, Church and Lambda Calculus were there first.
- d0mine 14y ago
  Discussion of the word count problem Knuth vs. McIlroy http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4304696 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4304696

brainflake 14y ago

And out of the ~250 programs that Knuth wrote last year, 2-3 would have solved a similar problem that your typical professional programmer would solve.

wakeup 14y ago

You should go read some Donald Knuth source code, or use a Donald Knuth Design (try TeX). Seriously I love this crazy guy, incredibly smart, but he can't code _properly_ for his life. This sums it up: He applied his intelligence in unconventional ways, winning a contest when he was in eighth grade by finding over 4,500 words that could be formed from the letters in "Ziegler's Giant Bar"; the judges had only about 2,500 words on their master list. This won him a television set for his school and a candy bar for everyone in his class. [Wikipedia]

baar 14y ago

a) Knuth does not solve "typical" problems. b) Despite his obvious knowledge about algorithms and data structures, Knuth may not be able to see advantages that many others see. EDIT: Oh, and what is the source of that quote?

jeffdavis 14y ago

Functional programming strikes me as most useful for software engineering. I'm not sure how that applies to Knuth, but my understanding is that most of the programs he writes are more oriented towards computer science than software engineering.

krichman 14y ago

One of the things Knuth is famous for is writing a lengthy program for word counts that was equivalent to no more than 6 lines of shell script. I highly doubt that he's wrong regarding his own programs, but it's most certainly wrong for the majority of programmers. PS if we're going to appeal to authority, Church and Lambda Calculus were there first.

d0mine 14y ago
Discussion of the word count problem Knuth vs. McIlroy http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4304696 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4304696