But three maverick scientists thought there might be a way. Knut Urban, Max Haider, and Harold Rose were known in the electron microscope community as troublemakers, and for years barely anyone had been interested in their research or,more importantly, in funding it.
And so I had to think last night, when I heard that news, that no doubt it would be something that Danny would be absolutely thrilled by. Donald Knuth, who is often called the father of computer science, once said, "An algorithm must be seen to be believed." And I love that quote.
And so he said, "I need to make fun of him. I need to put in a comment system." And so, his friend when he saw the comment was like, "What the fuck? And Knuth took a decade off to write his own tech-setting system.
And another quote from Thomas Pynchon-- "Who claims truth, truth abandons." And there's a little historical context. So Perec wrote to Knuth back in the days before Knuth was quite the household name that he is today and got a two 12 by 12 square.
Complexity. Sorry? Complexity. Complexity. So I asked Don Knuth this question. He said, layers of abstraction, which I would say is almost right.
Hi. This is really fun. My name is Lisa Knutson. And I'm not five generations like my friends here, but I grew up in a home where my dad was a law enforcement
Except that they all did seem to have hands on experience with computers, particularly some of them at a time when that was very unusual. So Donald Knuth happened to be at Case -- what I guess is now Case Western Reserve -- but they had an IBM-650, and they let undergraduates touch it. So he got to sit down with the machine and debug programs and look at the programs in the manual and say, "I could do better than that."
And another quote from Thomas Pynchon-- "Who claims truth, truth abandons." And there's a little historical context. And the co-author was Donald Knuth.
The word surreal wasn't chosen by me. It was chosen by Donald Knuth, who wrote a little book called "The Surreal Numbers"-- or called "Surreal Numbers" actually. They form an enormous field of numbers-- absolutely enormous-- that contains the real field and lies above it.
-- but he actually did find someone who did understood him in Donald Knuth. And so, Knuth talked -- this was in the context of how important reading source materials are to him, and since source materials and also computer code -- he said, "I was unable to pass that on to any of my students. There are people alive now in computer science who are doing this well -- a few. But I could count on the fingers of one hand
And so he said, "I need to make fun of him. I need to put in a comment system." And so, his friend when he saw the comment was like, "What the fuck? was some of that -- and probably the most interesting was Donald Knuth.
An average TEM image went from looking like this to this. A few months after the group's breakthrough, Knut Urban attended a microscopy conference to share these results. But because of the group's reputation, he was relegated to a small back room that barely anyone noticed.
about the World Wide Web. I had the great privilege during all of this to interview Donald Knuth. It was really the-- I think a lot of people would say-- they might call him the progenitor of computer science.
But that's one of the great things about my job, is that I get to talk to such people. Yeah. And I noticed that Donald Knuth's book is like 2,200 pages long. Well, he's working-- as I understand it, I think it's volume four.
it." So he sort of came over. And as I said, he's the one who does seem to sort of just read code for fun. Like I said, android, Chrome, Firefox, Open Office. Douglas Crockford is a big fan of Knuth's Literate Programming, but even he said he mostly read Knuth's prose instead of the actual code. He's also a big fan of reading as a group activity -- sort of 'inspections' kind of reading -- and also uses that in interviews.
He felt like the guy who wrote this thing in the 13th century in Sanskrit -- probably there was nobody he knew who understood what he was talking about. But he had these ideas about combinatorial -- what we now call combinatorial math -- and Knuth found a translation of this document, and he felt like this guy was talking to him. Like, he understood him. And he's like, "I had those same thoughts as I was getting started in computer programming." And so, this poor guy -- he'll never know
Like, he understood him. And he's like, "I had those same thoughts as I was getting started in computer programming." And so, this poor guy -- he'll never know -- but he actually did find someone who did understood him in Donald Knuth. And so, Knuth talked -- this was in the context of how important reading source materials are to him, and since source materials and also computer code -- he said, "I was unable
And so he said, "I need to make fun of him. I need to put in a comment system." And so, his friend when he saw the comment was like, "What the fuck? But my favorite moment involved -- with all due respect to Josh -- was when Knuth starts talking smack about Dikester. That's good stuff.
And so he said, "I need to make fun of him. I need to put in a comment system." And so, his friend when he saw the comment was like, "What the fuck? Because who else really can anymore? So Knuth said -- you know, I asked him about this thing, and he said, "But that's not the way he learned either.
I'll just rewrite it. That'll be easier than figuring it out." So the one guy who was a real inspiration on this point -- reading code -- is Donald Knuth -- inspiration on many things. I mean, so this guy obviously reads. I mean, his job is to sort of read almost everything in an area and distill it down into something the rest of us can pretend to understand.
we got a great crowd today welcome all and it's our pleasure to welcome to Google Don Knuth of course all you know him as a Turing Award winner as the inventor of tech as a recurring
And another quote from Thomas Pynchon-- "Who claims truth, truth abandons." And there's a little historical context. Like, there's a French author, George Perec, who wrote a book called "Life A User's Manual," which is Donald Knuth's favorite novel.
Becky Herbert from Herbert Farms, and Joe Morris, from Morris Beef, and Lisa Knutson, who provides chickens. They work with Eating with the Seasons, who are here to talk about the community-supported agriculture that they help provide to Googlers.
Fran Allen. There are a few. Turing Award winner. You guys should know who she is. Bernie Cosell? Nobody. See? I'm really proud of having Bernie Cosell in this book because -- as you'll hear -- he's a really interesting guy. And Donald Knuth? All right. You? You're out of here.
Peter Seibel: -- in that, there is no royal road to programming, right? It would be great if someone would interview a bunch of folks like this and produce a book that you would read it and then say, "Aha! That's how you become Donald Knuth. That's how you become Guy Steele -- in seven days." Right?
is commercial -- is that we don't have a lot of examples of good code to read." And he goes on to say, "Open source has helped with that." He also read Tech. So, how many people have actually looked at Tech, the program? Knuth's book. Yeah, a few. I found -- I asked everybody about Literate Programming and, obviously, Knuth was in favor.
He also read Tech. So, how many people have actually looked at Tech, the program? Knuth's book. Yeah, a few. I found -- I asked everybody about Literate Programming and, obviously, Knuth was in favor. Everyone else was a little mixed. You know, there were people who were like this, "Interesting." You know, "It's interesting to read."
but that toolkit was never right." They only had it for C, or whatever. Guy Steele said, maybe if they had good tool chains for literate programming in lisp he would have done it. So it sort of struck me that Knuth's been out there arguing for this and really getting nowhere on that front.
it's the same challenge. I'm trying to get into the author's mind, trying to figure out what the concept is. The more you learn to read other people's stuff, the more you're able to invent your own in the future, it seems to me." And, you know, I can just picture Knuth here decoding -- I mean, he doesn't know what these op codes mean and he's reading the source code.
You get quicker at it. The side effect of writing all this other stuff" -- and he was talking about just all these random projects that he was working on -- "the side effect of writing all this other stuff is, when you get to doing ordinary problems, you can do them very quickly." And Knuth -- I asked him about if he still enjoyed programming, he said, "Oh, my God, yes.
And so he said, "I need to make fun of him. I need to put in a comment system." And so, his friend when he saw the comment was like, "What the fuck? So that was down the line -- that was pretty much -- nobody was interested in proving things correct. Guy Steele, even Knuth likes to prove things