Part I -- Talking with Don Knuth, software pioneer

[thegreeensky]

good communicator really genius, an ideal person to talk with... :)

[csphere]

@benjamingrahamgibb This is probably the first comment I've ever made on here, and yes, these were fucking ridiculous questions. Its almost like those who want to stand out a bit too much think "oh well, everyone else is going to ask highly technical questions, so I'll make an impression by not doing so." Look, if everyone else is buying a blue hat, go ahead and feel special, buy a red hat. But fucking a, would you ask Stephen Hawking about what he thinks about the movie "Contact"? NO.

[thevalidators]

Scobleizer, you better interview people like Snooki and John Maccain.. leave the intelligence at peace.

[gbushster]

2 wiredboy27. Oh, thank you! I was wondering that! Thank you so much for your work! I really appreciate all the work you have done.

[wiredboy27]

11:43: Knuth: it also might mean that people like me aren't going to be good at programming anymore in 10 years, just the fact I'm good at the kind of computers we have now doesn't have any promise that I'd be able to cope with some other kind of machine, its... I'm specifically oriented towards computers the way they were when I grew up and I don't just... :12:10:

[wiredboy27]

11:20: Interviewer: he talked about the architectures and how at certain points of history the architecture that ran the computer changed and it seems like we're in the middle of another one where its shifting to graphic processors. Nvidia just made a deal with Intel right? Knuth: Yeah. Interviewer: Just last week at CES. Knuth: Right, thats going to make the programming different and it might be that actually, a different kind of, :11:43::::

[wiredboy27]

10:51: Knuth: The trouble is, if I look at the last 2000 programs I've written, maybe 2 of them are helped by multicore, so its helping only some people and thats why I'm not really happy about myself because well I can see how, in the last week, one of the things that I did with computers would actually have been improved by multicore and the answer is its very hard to think of any. Interviewer: Yeah, when Steve Watson showed me through this exhibit :11:20::

[wiredboy27]

10:14: Knuth: They're, they ran out of ideas and so they said 'OK now its your job, its your problem', so I'm glad to see that Dave Patterson had expressed this, its politically incorrect to say that, these multicores actually do a lot of important things well and so if you're doing video games and, or you're doing certain kinds of calculations that physicists like to have and I can think of lots and lots of applications where multicore is a super thing. :10:51:

[wiredboy27]

9:54: Knuth: opportunities there, I don't know whats, what the answers going to be but thats a killer app for the next ten years. Interviewer: Getting back to multicore, because I hear this complaint from programmers, I used to work at Microsoft and the programmers there were tearing their hair out trying to make it easier and they still, I don't think have arrived there, what could you do? Knuth: Well the chip designers are just passing the buck. :10:14:::

[wiredboy27]

9:17: Interviewer: So you're not talking about Facebook you're talking about the chip... Knuth: I'm talking about, yeah, I'm talking about things like that and, the software user interfaces I'm not, I'm pretty well, I think the next breakthrough in that area is going to be in connection with visualisation in things like medical conditions and so on, there's a great need to, perhaps, so that doctors and patients can better understand their diseases and so on and there's a huge :9:54::

[wiredboy27]

8:44: Knuth: and if I were with different people I would also talk about my pet peeves about a lot of stupid decisions that are being made by various engineers in my opinion. Interviewer: Tell me about some of them. Knuth: Well we'll see what, I don't know anybody who likes multicore except the people who are manufacturing the chips and they're trying to say well now its, we're giving you all this great hardware :9:17:::

[wiredboy27]

8:11: Knuth: 'Well yeah actually they have it all in one big computer, all in core.' I mean basic stuff, all at once, but then you have to replicate it out, make copies of it so that the data goes out without getting traffic jams so thats the kind of thing we would talk about... Interviewer: So you're talking about memcached? Knuth: How did you make it look so easy? Interviewer: Would you talk about memcached then and understand his... Knuth: Various kinds of, yeah :8:44:::::

[wiredboy27]

7:33 Knuth: Yeah, no, in the cases you mentioned we've been trying to talk about how you deal with the masses of data, for example Facebook, it all seems easy when you're using it but in fact if you know something about computers you realise, how did, how are they able to do this so fast, how are they able to get all this information from the millions of people who are involved with this? Well I found out that one of our professors, a consultant at Facebook, he said :8:11:

[wiredboy27]

7:05: Knuth: all the way through is elegant on many levels. Interviewer: Yep, but we're going to get a more thorough tour in a little bit, if you were sitting with some of the other people who are doing the bleeding edge work of today, Mark Zuckerberg or the 2 guys who started Google what would you be talking with them about, what are you intellectually curious about today's systems. Knuth: Well... Interviewer: Because some of those will walk through this hallway too. :7:33::::

[wiredboy27]

6:29: Interviewer: Right on, when I interviewed Mark Zuckerberg for instance, its very clear that he studied psychology in school and he understands how people think and work and what's going to get them addicted to his system right? Knuth: Yep, yeah so I married an artist, very important to me, I also started out with the idea of beauty and the things that I like about this exhibit is that its beautiful. The way they chose the textures and the materials, the style of typography :7:05::

[wiredboy27]

5:41: Knuth: spectacularly well so I like to recommend that people become well rounded and I also, because I have this idea that programming is a little bit, takes a little curiousity, what's it called, strange, quirky, still a programmer can't write, design something for other people to use unless he has some idea as to what other people are writing, and so thats why this collaboration is very important because we work together and we see from each other how to work. :6:29:

[wiredboy27]

5:02: Knuth: On the other hand I would say if you're that age, spend a lot of time also learning how to communicate, learning how to write, don't go 90% of your life into computers but balance it off and be a, and because the thing that's going to be most important in your future career is not your greatest strength but your greatest weakness, its going to define you, so if you have something that you're not able to do well, that's going to hold you back more than if you can do something :5:41:

[wiredboy27]

4:33: Interviewer: Yeah, if you're talking to a 12 year old coming through this exhibit what would you, and you had a chance to talk with him or her what would you do to inspire them? Knuth: So I would say if you really find that, if you resonate with computers then you're going to be always in demand throughout your life because there's only going to be 1 in 50 people like you and you're going to be able to change the world in an important way :5:02::

[wiredboy27]

3:56: Knuth: and the ones who discover that they have the talent for computers I try to nourish them and the ones who don't I just try to say well, make friends with someone who does because teamwork is important nobody has, everybody has their own perspective on things and by working, the name of the game for the future is networking or working together rather than having each person only doing what they're good at. :4:33:

[wiredboy27]

3:11: Knuth: mean that I can also resonate with a computer, a computer and I can be in sync with each other and there are many other kinds of skills and I have not been very good at football playing and various other things and I don't know how to deal with money but I sure do know how to program and there I think maybe 1 person in 50 has this peculiarity that I have, and so I tried to realise that everybody has a variety of talents :3:56:

[warunsl]

You know that Don is not just any other guy when Scoble doesn't start the interview with "Who are you?"

Thanks a lot Scoble, for the interview.

[wiredboy27]

2:35: Interviewer: What's important to know about this exhibit, when school kids come through this exhibit what are you hoping they get out of it Knuth: Beauty. I think, I'm thinking how, I've got two main reactions to that, one is, to me, its not something that I do for money, its something that I do, that I have to, because I think that, I was born to be a geek in a certain way that, the certain kind of talents that I had :3:11::

[wiredboy27]

1:56: Knuth: and then, and now, before, there's still great stuff thats being discovered that is fairly near the surface, fairly near the root its not all of itself, but it sure is a heck of a lot more challenging now when there's depth, there's tens of thousands of people all looking at, at things from when there was only a few dozens of us. Interviewer: Yeah, since a lot of people are going to watch this video, its not everybody gets the chance to sit here in this exhibit with you. :2:35::

[wiredboy27]

1:24: Knuth: I came just about the right time though because I could ride the waves when computers became affordable. When I was a freshman in college was the first year that there were more than a thousand computers in the world, before that there were just a few, and so then over the years, I sort of grew up at the time when there were still easy problems left to solve and we had first cut at those :1:56:

[wiredboy27]

0:40: Interviewer: and the craft of software so thank you. Knuth : OK then I can only demean myself in your eye by speaking then. I'm a better writer than speaker, but also, I feel like this, even though I'm kind of old I like to point out that I was just an eight grader when most of the important stuff with computers were done so I might be considered a pioneer but really I came fairly late in the game in the real scheme of things. :1:24::

[wiredboy27]

0:14: Interviewer: So we're at the Computer History Museum seeing the New Revolution's exhibit and we're in the software area, one of the guru's of software, Don Knuth. Knuth: Hi. Interviewer: Thank you, thank you for everything you've done for programmers around the world because on Twitter, I took a picture of you and already people are saying 'Oh Man I learnt how to program from Don', I read his books, he's a guru, all around the world you've impacted the art :0:40:::

[gbushster]

Please, put this interview transcript somewhere.

[illinkim]

@gbushster +1

[aiboy88]

man.. this is awsome :) i will sell my soul just to talk to him ...