Seek Memory: Donald Knuth

O, The Stuff You'll Encounter!

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Beware The Bard

“If the subject of a Poem is obscure, or not generally known, or not interesting, and if it abounds with allusions, and facts of this improper, and uninteresting character, the writer who chuses the subject, and introduces those improper, and unaffecting allusions, and facts, betrays a great want of poetical judgment, and taste.”

—Percival Stockdale
(Radcliffe, "The Bard. A Pindaric Ode.")

The Programmer

“The programmer, like the poet, works only slightly removed from pure thought-stuff. He builds his castles in the air, from air, creating by exertion of the imagination. Few media of creation are so flexible, so easy to polish and rework, so readily capable of realizing grand conceptual structures.... Yet the program construct, unlike the poet's words, is real in the sense that it moves and works, producing visible outputs separate from the construct itself.... The magic of myth and legend has come true in our time. One types the correct incantation on a keyboard, and a display screen comes to life, showing things that never were nor could be.”

—Fred Brooks
(The Mythical Man-Month, p 7)

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Wednesday, August 24, 2016

Donald Knuth