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For Donald Knuth, good coding is synonymous with beautiful expression

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Re: For Donald Knuth, good coding is synonymous with beautiful expression

#151

Post by odyssey7 »

kragen wrote: post #32

A thing I never knew before: Donald Knuth, the paragon of scholarship and of a life well spent, not only cleans his own toilets but bought a specific janitorial uniform to make the process more efficient. I find this inspiring enough that I am going to clean my toilet now.

> a life well spent

When I read this, my first thought was about how Knuth hasn't used email since 1990.

"I have been a happy man ever since January 1, 1990, when I no longer had an email address. I'd used email since about 1975, and it seems to me that 15 years of email is plenty for one lifetime."

Source: https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/email.html

Re: For Donald Knuth, good coding is synonymous with beautiful expression

#152

Post by boomlinde »

paganel wrote: post #101
nickdrozd wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think what he has in mind are small programs that do some kind of nontrivial computation without much in the way of IO or UI. For example, [1] is a program from December 2019 that "finds n-bit binary squares that are palindromic". A great way to get into this kind of thing if you're stuck for ideas is to go through the Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences [2] and just write little programs to print out the firs…

> is a program from December 2019 that "finds n-bit binary squares that are palindromic". No dis-respect for Donald Knuth (who of course I found orders and orders of magnitude above programmers such as myself) and no dis-respect to people that found those types of programs interesting, but there are also programmers (like me) for whom those programs are just simple riddles, with almost no interest whatsoever. They're…

No one was holding their breath for a program that finds n-bit binary squares that are palindromatic, but this kind of mucking about can be useful as exercise and as a source of new insights, both of which will aid the programmer in achieving more ambitious goals.

The musician doesn't noodle around randomly or repeat uninteresting exercises with the ambition that that in itself is going to constitute a meaningful and memorable work.

Re: For Donald Knuth, good coding is synonymous with beautiful expression

#153

Post by hackermailman »

nickdrozd wrote: post #94
bbbobbb wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does it mean though? What programs? I can't write new programs at work where I maintain existing applications for the most part. What kind of programs, not for the sake of programs, can you actually write almost daily?

I think what he has in mind are small programs that do some kind of nontrivial computation without much in the way of IO or UI. For example, [1] is a program from December 2019 that "finds n-bit binary squares that are palindromic". A great way to get into this kind of thing if you're stuck for ideas is to go through the Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences [2] and just write little programs to print out the firs…

Of course the answer for OP is reading and working through taocp, that practice makes you better which is why Knuth spent his life writing these books even if technically, they are as the Knuth states just a study of 'alg a compared to alg b' the byproduct is more practice that OP is looking for.

Re: For Donald Knuth, good coding is synonymous with beautiful expression

#155

Post by kick »

dirtydroog wrote: post #146
kick wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MMIX programs can actually be run, and MMIX has multiple simulators. Actual MMIX chips can be made. MMIX also allows students to reason about the properties of modern chips without experiencing quite the complexity they'd have to deal with normally. This is valuable for many reasons.

Things like branch prediction, caches, instruction pipelining? Not really. People want the algorithm, not a difficult to translate implementation.

To paraphrase Knuth in what I think was a Dr. Dobbs interview: the book isn't for those people, then; they should make their own book.

Re: For Donald Knuth, good coding is synonymous with beautiful expression

#156

Post by NateEag »

larntz wrote: post #22
alfonsodev wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be success in art but failing in life, by the quote definition, I infer he’s equating success in life with your minimum quality of life indicators being as high as posible, if I got it right.

That's how I read it also. Take for example Kurt Cobain (whatever you think of him and his music). He had major success in music, but his life was a disaster and not something I'd hope for a loved one. I do agree that it seems like the best art is created by "tortured artists".

Tortured artists have produced some great work, true.

J. S. Bach had some hardships in his life, but he wasn't tortured.

J. R. R. Tolkien, similarly, was not tortured.

da Vinci's life doesn't seem to have been horrible either.

I think they stand as strong counterexamples to the idea that tortured artists make the best art.

Re: For Donald Knuth, good coding is synonymous with beautiful expression

#157

Post by asiachick »

plg wrote: post #4

I like this: "A person’s success in life is determined by having a high minimum, not a high maximum. If you can do something really well but there are other things at which you’re failing, the latter will hold you back. But if almost everything you do is up there, then you’ve got a good life."

That's about the most depressing thing I've ever heard. So basically if I'm not great at everything I suck. I guess Knuth must be amazing in bed, can play every instrument known, solve top problems in quantum mechanics, compete in all olympic events, etc or he's not having a good life.

Re: For Donald Knuth, good coding is synonymous with beautiful expression

#158

Post by kick »

gowld wrote: post #89
plg wrote: post #4

I like this: "A person’s success in life is determined by having a high minimum, not a high maximum. If you can do something really well but there are other things at which you’re failing, the latter will hold you back. But if almost everything you do is up there, then you’ve got a good life."

That doesn't relly make sense. Everyone's minmum is 0 (or negative) at something . Knuth is famously proudly terrible at email and "keeping on top of things". Does that make him a failure? Of course not.

Knuth isn't "terrible" at electronic mail or keeping on top of things. He used electronic mail for decades. He's old. He doesn't want to use it anymore. So he doesn't.

https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/email.html

Re: For Donald Knuth, good coding is synonymous with beautiful expression

#159

Post by NomDePlum »

jacobolus wrote: post #144
nickcw wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ha! I had the same experience in my art evening classes. One evening our teacher told us that we had to produce three paintings in the 2.5 hour lesson. It is challenging enough producing one in that time period. It was a fantastic learning experience in letting go. The first picture I did was OK, the second was better and the third was great - all because I'd given up thinking at that point and was just doing. Someti…

On the other hand, I took a few semesters of elective photography courses in high school, and there’s a certain essential amount of time it takes to make a good photo print and run it through all the chemicals. It can’t really be compressed down shorter than about 35–40 minutes for the whole process with only limited ability to parallelize the work while maintaining quality, which makes it tough to make more than 1 o…

Is this maybe then analogous to the essential and accidental complexity premise that Fred Brooks put forwards?

It may be that in painting the cost of accidental complexity can be reduced greatly but in photography due to necessary post-processing there is less on an opportunity.

That doesn't mean there isn't an opportunity here. Being neither a photographer or painter I am most likely not the best person to comment however!

Re: For Donald Knuth, good coding is synonymous with beautiful expression

#160

Post by Gibbon1 »

asiachick wrote: post #157
plg wrote: post #4

I like this: "A person’s success in life is determined by having a high minimum, not a high maximum. If you can do something really well but there are other things at which you’re failing, the latter will hold you back. But if almost everything you do is up there, then you’ve got a good life."

That's about the most depressing thing I've ever heard. So basically if I'm not great at everything I suck. I guess Knuth must be amazing in bed, can play every instrument known, solve top problems in quantum mechanics, compete in all olympic events, etc or he's not having a good life.

There is a De-motivational Poster from back in the day with a picture of a skier doing an airborne yard sale. Captioned with 'If you can't learn to do something well, learn to enjoy doing it poorly'

A diamond right there.

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