Do you think Donald Knuth will be able to finish his remaining four volumes of TAOCP?
Volume 4 – Combinatorial Algorithms
Volume 5 – Syntactic Algorithms
Volume 6 – The Theory of Context-Free Languages (planned)
Volume 7 – Compiler Techniques (planned)
Name:
Anonymous2012-09-29 17:00
>>1
Take everything you know about Knuth, analyze every his writing and create an AI of him, so it will finish his work.
Name:
Anonymous2012-09-29 17:11
III. The Summer Of 1960 (Time Spent with don knuth)
The 205 Fortran project started near the end of January, 1960 and was completed in early October, 1960. That is pretty fast by any standards. However, there was another remarkable effort going on at the same time.
We spent the first two months designing the compiler. Then we coded for a month. As we completed the code, we mailed it to Toni Schumann to have it keypunched in Pasadena. In April, we were ready to fly to Pasadena and debug the code. (This was not exactly interactive programming.) Jack Meyers was on the first trip. but I think he. had quit by the second trip. Lloyd Turner and I spent four and a half months in Pasacera between April and October.
In June we were introduced to this tall college kid that always signed his name with lowercase letters. He was don knuth. He had contracted with Brad MacKenzie to write a 205 Algol 58 Compiler that would be a subset of the 220 Algol 58 compilar that was being written by Jack Merner and Joel Erdwin.
don claimed that he could write the compiler and a language manual all by himself during his three and a half month summer vacation. He said that he would do it for $5000. Our Fortran compiler required a card reader, card punch. line printer and automatic floating point. Don said that he would not need the card reader or card punch, but he wanted a magnetic tape unit and paper tape. I asked Gerard Guyod how Brad could have been suckered into paying this college kid $5000 to write something that had to be a piece of junk if he was only going to spend three and a half months on it. Gerard whispered his response to me. He said "We think that he already has it written. He probably did it in his spare time while working in the computer center at Case Institute." I still wasn't entirely satisfied with that answer because I was a college graduate whose first job was for 5325 per month and I had just changed jobs and was making $525 per month. Besides that it was taking mortal human beings 25 man-years to write compilers: not three and a half man-months. I thought that Brad had taker leave of his senses.
There was only one 205 at the Pasadena Plant. It was primarily used to run the payroll. Lloyd and I were given top priority on the machine since real money was going to be given to Burroughs as soon as we successfully finished our compiler. Payroll had second priority and don was third. The payroll was usually run at 8:00 P.M. on Wednesday's, but if we wanted the machine then, we could literally bump the payroll. On several occasions, we delayed the payroll until 1:00 or 2:00 A.M. on Thursday. After a few weeks of bumping payroll- they complained and were given top priority with our project second. That was a big relief to me because we always worked at least 100 hours a week while we were in Pasadena, and Wednesday evenings provided some time to relax. On many occasions, we would go to work at midnight on
8
Wednesday only to find the payroll half done and the operators out for a beer. So Lloyd and I would finish running the payroll to get our machine back. It was not exactly a totally secure system.
It seemed that don was always there, patiently waiting his turn. He knew when we went out to dinner and when we slept. Our compilers were both punched or cards and were the same size. We had written ours in STAR 0, the only assembler that Burroughs supported on the 205. It had been Dick Berman's first programming project. Our compiler took one hour and 45 minutes to assemble. The first week of don's project he spent in writing his own assembler. He could assemble his compiler in 45 minutes. We were green with envy. I am sure that don used only half the computer time that Lloyd and I used.
As the summer wore on don seemed to be losing the total confidence that he had at the beginning of the summer. The pressure was beginning to show. Then something happened that nearly destroyed him. Even though his compiler was going to be distributed on paper tape, he had been working all summer from cards. The time finally came for him to dump the compiler to tope. But it wouldn't fit. I thought that don was going to have a heart attack. It was a classic case of an irresistible force (don's intellect) meeting an immovable object (the size of a reel of paper, tape). As I recall the problem was resolved by Brad allowing him to use two reels of tape.
Finally the Last day of summer arrived and don had his compiler but not the manual. . We were all physically and mentally exhausted. It was Late in the evening when I saw don sitting down at Betty Potter's typewriter to start 'his manual. I had really grown to like and respect don, but I felt very sorry for him having to get over this last hurdle. So I sat down with him and proofread the pages as they came out of the typewriter. It seemed that he was composing and typing as fast as I could read. By morning the manual was done. Years later when don's first book came but, he told me that if I would proofread it for him that he would pay me a dollar for every error that I found, including typographical errors. I took the offer as a great personal compliment at the time, but I think that he probably made that a standing-offer to anyone.
There were naturally comparisons made between the two compilers. don's Algol compiled 45 cards per minute. Our Fortran compiled 40. cards per minute. (The IBM Fortransit that we had to beat ran 10 cards per minute.) The Fortran object code ran somewhat faster than the Algol object code. There were some bugs in don's compiler that he fixed at the Christmas break. The most remarkable thing about our compiler is that I think that there was only one bug in it when it was released.. I spent some time at the C. F. Braun Co. showing them how to use it and they never found any bugs. Lloyd spent some time in Texas showing people how to use it. He may have found some bugs, but I am only
9
aware of one. It was in my code and I flew to Texas and fixed it. The patch used the last available word of memory. The machine had 4080 words of memory, and we used every one of them. I could never tell which compiler was the best, but don's compiler was certainly no piece of junk. I suspect that he had it well thought out by the beginning of the summer, but I am sure that it was not already written when he get there. Score one for Brad.
don returned to Case Institute for his Senior Year. At the graduation ceremonies, they were handing out the diplomas in alphabetical order. But they passed over don when they got to the k's. (Maybe lowercase k comes after Z). After all of the diplomas were handed out, they asked don to step up on the platform. They said for the first time in the history of Case Institute, they were conferring a Masters Degree on a student that had been pursuing a Bachelors Degree. don had taken nothing but graduate level math courses for the past two years and he was always the best student in the class. He got his Ph.D. n from Cal Tech in a remarkably shot time while working up to forty hours a week at Burroughs (in violation of Cal Tech's policy that limits the number of hours that a Ph.D. candidate can work). It was apparently so easy for him that he hardly seemed aware that he was in college. He was always well rested and never rushed for anything.
In 1961, the National ACM meeting was held in Los Angeles. The keynote speaker was Tom Watson, the Chairman of the Board Of IBM. Bob Barton was the second or third speaker after Watson. don and Lloyd and I were in the audience of approximately 1200 people. Barton was his usually charming self. He said "You people have come here to learn about programming, but I came here to tell you that I am going to put you out of business with the introduction of superior languages and superior compilers. There are only three people in this room that really know how to write a compiler and I would like for them to stand up now. They are don knuth, Lloyd Turner and Richard Waychoff."
So teacher, that is how we spent the summer of 1960.
Name:
Anonymous2012-09-29 17:12
>>1
Of course not. Especially after having to split volume 4 into three separate subvolumes. I doubt he'll even manage to finish those before kicking the bucket. Then they'll hire some poor sap to try to assemble his notes into the remaining volumes.