Donald Knuth's Christmas 2022 Lecture on Trees

A person I fondly connected with via this books back in the 70s, always interesting:    Donald Knuth's 2022 'Christmas Tree' Lecture at Stanford  Is About Trees  ... '    Also on Youtube:  https://youtu.be/zg6YRqT4Duo  

Let's Not Dumb Down the History of Computer Science

Followed Donald Knuth for years, read much of his writing, always an inciteful commenter on the details of computer science.  Reading this now.

Let's Not Dumb Down the History of Computer Science   By Donald E. Knuth, Len Shustek

Communications of the ACM, February 2021, Vol. 64 No. 2, Pages 33-35

10.1145/3442377

Editor's note: On May 7, 2014, Don Knuth delivered that year's Kailath Lecturea at Stanford University to a packed auditorium. In it he decried the absence of technical content from the histories of computer science being written, and he made an impassioned plea for historians of computer science to get back on track, as the historians of mathematics have always been.

Both the video and, now, the verbatim transcriptc of that talk are online. In the January 2015 issue of Communications,d historian Thomas Haigh analyzed and responded to the talk, concluding that "work of the particular kind preferred by Knuth will flourish only if his colleagues in computer science are willing to produce, reward, or commission it."

This Viewpoint, which we thank Communications Senior Editor Moshe Vardi for suggesting, is a condensed and highly edited transcript of the original talk that has provoked so much discussion. .. " 

ACM Bytecast: Donald Knuth on Computing

From my earliest days doing coding, I was reading Donald Knuth's legendary texts.  Now here is a free and open podcast interview with him.  Will be following.

" ... In the latest episode of ACM ByteCast, a new podcast series at the intersection of computing research and practice, host Rashmi Mohan interviews legendary computer scientist Donald Knuth. Knuth is the 1974 ACM A.M. Turing Laureate and author of the hugely popular textbook series, "The Art of Computer Programming." They discuss what led him to discover his love of computing as well as writing about computer programming, his outlook on how people learn technical skills, how his mentorship has helped him write “human oriented” programs, how his dissatisfaction with early digital typesetting led him to develop TeX, and the problems he is still working to solve.

The podcast is available in the ACM Learning Center https://learning.acm.org/bytecast , where you can also subscribe to an RSS feed as well as download a full transcript of each episode, and on popular podcast platforms including Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and Stitcher.  ... 

Donald Knuth Spreads the Code

Knuth was an inspiration in my earliest days of coding.   Always pull out his books and skim them when he name comes up.

Donald Knuth Reflects on 50 years of ‘The Art of Computer Programming‘    By Denton Daily

Donald Knuth, who received the ACM A.M. Turing Award for 1974.
With more than a million copies in print, Donald Knuth's "The Art of Computer Programming" is the Bible of its field.

For half a century, the Stanford computer scientist Donald Knuth, who bears a slight resemblance to Yoda — albeit standing 6-foot-4 and wearing glasses — has reigned as the spirit-guide of the algorithmic realm.

He is the author of "The Art of Computer Programming," a continuing four-volume opus that is his life's work. The first volume debuted in 1968, and the collected volumes (sold as a boxed set for about $250) were included by American Scientist in 2013 on its list of books that shaped the last century of science — alongside a special edition of "The Autobiography of Charles Darwin," Tom Wolfe's "The Right Stuff," Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring" and monographs by Albert Einstein, John von Neumann, and Richard Feynman.

With more than one million copies in print, "The Art of Computer Programming" is the Bible of its field. "Like an actual bible, it is long and comprehensive; no other book is as comprehensive," said Peter Norvig, a director of research at Google. After 652 pages, volume one closes with a blurb on the back cover from Bill Gates: "You should definitely send me a résumé if you can read the whole thing."

The volume opens with an excerpt from "McCall's Cookbook":
Here is your book, the one your thousands of letters have asked us to publish. It has taken us years to do, checking and rechecking countless recipes to bring you only the best, only the interesting, only the perfect.

Inside are algorithms, the recipes that feed the digital age — although, as Knuth likes to point out, algorithms can also be found on Babylonian tablets from 3,800 years ago. He is an esteemed algorithmist; his name is attached to some of the field's most important specimens, such as the Knuth-Morris-Pratt string-searching algorithm. Devised in 1970, it finds all occurrences of a given word or pattern of letters in a text; for instance, when you hit Command+F to search for a keyword in a document.   .... " 

Donald Knuth

I slogged and marvelled  through his books when they came out starting in 1968, there are so many embedded gems.  My friends at my first 'coding' job gave me a copy when I moved on to grad school .... WSJ has a good overview of him,  his work and expression of this strange 'art'.    These books are quite technical, but worth having for any practitioner, past or present.

The Yoda of Silicon Valley
Donald Knuth, master of algorithms, reflects on 50 years of his opus-in-progress, “The Art of Computer Programming.”   ...

" ... With more than one million copies in print, “The Art of Computer Programming” is the Bible of its field. “Like an actual bible, it is long and comprehensive; no other book is as comprehensive,” said Peter Norvig, a director of research at Google. After 652 pages, volume one closes with a blurb on the back cover from Bill Gates: “You should definitely send me a résumé if you can read the whole thing.”

 ... "

Donald Knuth Gets SIAM Award

Donald Knuth was an inspiration since my earliest use of computing.   Reveled and still awaiting the latest volume of his Art of Computer Programming.  For now here are many of his talks on Youtube.   Looking for the SIAM talk.   Likely technical.   More.

" ... The Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) has awarded the 2016 John von Neumann Lecture prize to Donald E. Knuth of Stanford University for his transformative contributions to mathematics and computer science. Knuth delivered the associated prize lecture, "Satisfiability and Combinatorics," at the SIAM Annual Meeting in Boston, Massachusetts, on July 12. The highest honor awarded by SIAM, the flagship lecture recognizes outstanding and distinguished contributions to the field of applied mathematical sciences and the effective communication of these ideas to the community. ... " 

Donald Knuth on the History of Computing

In CACM: Stanford Prof Donald Knuth is a hero to many of us who grew up during the real emergence of computing, to the point that most every person uses it personally every day.  He spent much time systematizing it as a science  Are we now dumbing the science down?  Yes, I say, but that has also brought it to many more people as sets of engineering principles.  A direction that sounds perilous.   Call it accessibility.     Talk and commentary.  (Updated)

An Oral History of Donald Knuth

In the Communications of the ACM this month there is an interview with Donald Knuth, 'premier artist' of computer science, professor emeritus at Stanford. Many of us were inspired by him and his portrayal of very hard problems as art. His delightfully archaic home page. On his 70th. It fits in well with today's design directions. When I left the Pentagon I was given a set of his books as a parting gift. I can't point directly to the ACM article, but I can point to its origin at the Computer Science Museum site. Inspirational especially for those that are thinking about math and science careers.

Also, the Communications of the ACM, the premier computer science mag and now 50 years old, has done a nice job of making its articles more accessible to the practitioner. Like all technical magazines, as a field expands in depth and breadth, even professionals in the field cannot spend the time to understand articles outside their sub-specialties. We do hunger for new frontiers, accurately explained and abstracted. Now I wish I could link to ACM articles from my blog, to my knowledge I cannot. I do understand the economic issues involved with publishing an expensive magazine.