Philip Kiely has an interesting interview with Don Knuth that concentrates on the writing aspects of Knuth’s career. Everyone knows about The Art of Computer Programming (AOCP) and TeX but Kiely’s interview drills down on why things are the way they are with Knuth’s writing and the original intent of TeX.
We all appreciate that AOCP is an ongoing project of long standing but it’s easy to forget what this means. That aspect was brought home to me when Kiely mentioned that Knuth started writing it before his parents were born. You gain a new appreciation for Knuth’s description of it as his “life’s work” when you realize that he’s been working on it for almost 60 years. Sixty years. That’s twice as long as many Irreal readers have been alive.
The thing that comes through in the interview is that Knuth is dedicated to bringing the same joy he finds in the material to others. He structures his prose to keep the reader turning the page. Then, of course, there’s his fanatical commitment to making his printed works look good.
Even after his first book was produced with TeX, he was despondent because he didn’t like the way he’d rendered the number ‘5’. Again, it’s easy to forget the incredible amount of work that went into making TeX not just a decent typesetter but a great typesetter.
Knuth is a treasure. Even though it’s far from certain that he will live to complete AOCP, our field—and the world at large—is better off for the work he has completed. If it weren’t for him, we’d all be writing our papers in Word and thinking it was state of the art.