<story><title>The Yoda of Silicon Valley</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/17/science/donald-knuth-computers-algorithms-programming.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>pjmorris</author><text>My favorite Knuth story, attributed to Alan Kay (if you&amp;#x27;re around, would love confirmation):&lt;p&gt;When I was at Stanford with the AI project [in the late 1960s] one of the things we used to do every Thanksgiving is have a computer programming contest with people on research projects in the Bay area. The prize I think was a turkey.&lt;p&gt;[John] McCarthy used to make up the problems. The one year that Knuth entered this, he won both the fastest time getting the program running and he also won the fastest execution of the algorithm. He did it on the worst system with remote batch called the Wilbur system. And he basically beat the shit out of everyone.&lt;p&gt;And they asked him, &amp;quot;How could you possibly do this?&amp;quot; And he answered, &amp;quot;When I learned to program, you were lucky if you got five minutes with the machine a day. If you wanted to get the program going, it just had to be written right. So people just learned to program like it was carving stone. You sort of have to sidle up to it. That&amp;#x27;s how I learned to program.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;[0] &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.softpanorama.org&amp;#x2F;People&amp;#x2F;Knuth&amp;#x2F;index.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.softpanorama.org&amp;#x2F;People&amp;#x2F;Knuth&amp;#x2F;index.shtml&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>todd8</author><text>I’ve posted this comment on HN before, but this is my best Knuth story:&lt;p&gt;In the 70&amp;#x27;s I had a co-worker, perhaps the best programmer in the department, that had gone to school with Knuth. He told me that one day while in college Knuth was using one of the available key-punch machines to punch his program on cards. My friend was ready to punch his program so he stood nearby to wait for Knuth to finish. Knuth, working on a big program, offered to Keypunch my friends program before finishing his own because my friend&amp;#x27;s program was shorter and Knuth could keypunch quite fast.&lt;p&gt;While watching over Knuth&amp;#x27;s shoulder, my friend noticed Knuth speeding up and slowing down at irregular intervals. Later he asked him about that and Knuth replied that he was fixing the bugs in my friend&amp;#x27;s Fortran as he punched it out.</text></comment>
<story><title>The Yoda of Silicon Valley</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/17/science/donald-knuth-computers-algorithms-programming.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>pjmorris</author><text>My favorite Knuth story, attributed to Alan Kay (if you&amp;#x27;re around, would love confirmation):&lt;p&gt;When I was at Stanford with the AI project [in the late 1960s] one of the things we used to do every Thanksgiving is have a computer programming contest with people on research projects in the Bay area. The prize I think was a turkey.&lt;p&gt;[John] McCarthy used to make up the problems. The one year that Knuth entered this, he won both the fastest time getting the program running and he also won the fastest execution of the algorithm. He did it on the worst system with remote batch called the Wilbur system. And he basically beat the shit out of everyone.&lt;p&gt;And they asked him, &amp;quot;How could you possibly do this?&amp;quot; And he answered, &amp;quot;When I learned to program, you were lucky if you got five minutes with the machine a day. If you wanted to get the program going, it just had to be written right. So people just learned to program like it was carving stone. You sort of have to sidle up to it. That&amp;#x27;s how I learned to program.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;[0] &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.softpanorama.org&amp;#x2F;People&amp;#x2F;Knuth&amp;#x2F;index.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.softpanorama.org&amp;#x2F;People&amp;#x2F;Knuth&amp;#x2F;index.shtml&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>JackFr</author><text>&amp;gt; He did it on the worst system with remote batch called the Wilbur system.&lt;p&gt;I think you mean WYLBUR.&lt;p&gt;I had the &amp;quot;opportunity&amp;quot; to work with WYLBUR once in 1993, and I remember it to this day. &amp;quot;the worst system with remote batch&amp;quot; dramatically understates how bad it was.  Hearing this raises Knuth even higher in my estimation.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;ORVYL_and_WYLBUR&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;ORVYL_and_WYLBUR&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>