The Enduring Art of Computer Programming

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Hear hear!

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@pj - the problem is not the fact that he expressed an opinion, but he’s doing so from his CS pedestal. I have absolutely no problem with people expressing viewpoints. That’s how the political process works after all. However attempting to lend weight to a political view based on experience in a completely different–and unrelated, that’s the key–arena is, in fact, a big problem today.

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But Frank, the biggest problem at the end of 2001 was that very few people were critical enough of Mr Bush, thus landing the USA with another Vietnam-type conflict. “Mission accomplished”.

I remember debating with deranged Americans around that time, and they were very blind to what was going on. WMDs, Saddam supporting terrorists, stability in the region, and so on were all used as reasons. Yet it was easy, even back then, to spot the real reason (oil and an desire to appear superior to his dad). Unless you happened to have voted for that insane guy in the first place; Just apply common sense.

By now all this is so obvious, that you should not be surprised that everyone, regardless of their occupation, is pointing it out. In fact, given the circumstances, it should be considered a crime not doing so.

Impeach Bush.

–
Rune

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He kind of looks like master yoda in the picture, doesnt he?

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Hi,
I am a self-taught developer.I have no comp science background.How easy it will be for me to read “art of computer programming”.Any suggestions,how should I approach reading it?

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Thank you, Dr.Knuth and happy birth day. :slight_smile:

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Von no read good?

I believe Jeff was refering to ‘Jeffrey Shallit’ who “compiled an excellent set of links commemorating the 70th birthday of this legendary figure:”

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“Knuth is arguably the most famous living computer scientist”

although if you asked the general public, you’d probably get “Bill Gates” as a response.

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One of the most important things about Knuth’s work is that he is meticulous in finding and crediting original sources.

An appalling side-effect of that is to find out the number of times that history has been repeated, and the variety of situation in which, because people do not have any appreciation of what has gone before, second-rate techniques are invented when first-rate techniques are available in the literature.

Too many developers have no idea of what is in the literature. Or even that there is one.