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Donald E. Knuth

"The Art of Computer Programming"

Donald Knuth smiling at the Open Content Alliance

Photo: Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA)

If you write code and you have not heard of Donald Knuth, stop what you are doing and pay attention.

Born in 1938, Knuth is the author of The Art of Computer Programming (TAOCP), a multi-volume work that has been called the Bible of computer science. He started writing it in 1962. He is still writing it. Volume 4B came out in 2022. The man does not rush.

He also created TeX, the typesetting system, because he was unhappy with how his books were being printed. Most people would have written a strongly-worded letter. Knuth wrote an entire typesetting engine that is still the standard in academic publishing 40+ years later.

Greatest Hits

The Art of Computer Programming (1968-present) -- the definitive reference on algorithms and data structures. Knuth offers $2.56 (one "hexadecimal dollar") to anyone who finds an error.
TeX (1978) -- typesetting system. Version number converges to pi. Current version: 3.141592653.
METAFONT (1979) -- font design system. Version converges to e.
Literate Programming (1984) -- the idea that programs should be written for humans to read, not just machines to execute.
Surreal Numbers (1974) -- a mathematical novella. Yes, really.
The Stanford GraphBase (1993) -- a collection of datasets and programs for combinatorial computing.

Things You Should Know

He does not use email. He stopped reading it in 1990. His secretary prints out anything important. He was ahead of his time.
He has a pipe organ in his house.
He checks his code by hand before running it. On paper.
He once lectured for an entire semester on a single page of one of his books.
His Erdos number is 2. His TAOCP citation count is in the tens of thousands.
He pronounces his name "Ka-NOOTH", not "Nuth".

Quotes

"Premature optimization is the root of all evil."

"Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tested it."

"Science is what we understand well enough to explain to a computer. Art is everything else we do."

"The best programs are written so that computing machines can perform them quickly and so that human beings can understand them clearly."

This page exists because Knuth would appreciate a web site that still uses flat files and Perl CGI scripts.

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