Computer History Museum
2 HN recommenders · recommended in 3 months, 2019–2022
3:07:26 · 15K views · Dec 5, 2018
A roughly three-hour Computer History Museum oral history interview of Donald Knuth by Edward Feigenbaum, recorded in 2007. Knuth covers his family, music, early programming, his thesis, The Art of Computer Programming, and the detour into TeX and METAFONT.
HN recommends it as a superb, personal long-form look at Knuth's life and work habits.
3 comments from Hacker News
I recommend this video to you: Oral History of Donald Knuth Part 1 and 2: this video on The Computer History Museum Youtube channel. It's a _really_ long interview, +7 hours. But it's also superb. He is interviewed by his friend and colleague Edward Feigenbaum who does a stellar job. He brings out the human Donald Knuth in a remarkable way. It gave me great respect and admiration for Donald Knuth life and achievements. For me I dare to say it was transformative in regards to human pursuit of knowledge, passion and what it means to be a intellectual human being. td;dr: Watched a Donald Knuth interview and got a nerd crush
Donald Knuth interviews are so interesting, but would like to particularly highlight this little piece of advice, out of this great playlist: "Donald Knuth - My advice to young people": [LINK] Complete Playlist - "Donald Knuth (Computer scientist)" [97 videos]: [LINK] Also the "Oral History of Donald Knuth" from the Computer History Museum is great. "Oral History of Donald Knuth Part 1": this video "Oral History of Donald Knuth Part 2": [LINK] Plus.. "Donald Knuth Interview 2006": [LINK] "An Interview with Donald Knuth": [LINK] "Interview with Donald Knuth": [LINK] This somewhat "colourful" page also tracks a few: [LINK] PS: The story that he told Steve Jobs he was "Full of shit" is not true. "Donald Knuth never told Steve Jobs that he was full of shit" [LINK]
This is in fact one of several oral histories that Knuth has done over the last few years: * 2001, 2 hours audio ( [LINK] ), 27-page transcript ( [LINK] ) (partial I guess?) * 2006, Web of Stories, 7.5 hours video in 97 short parts [LINK] , transcript ( [LINK] ) * 2007, interview by Ed Feigenbaum, 3 hours ( this video ) + 4 hours ( [LINK] ), 73-page transcript ( [LINK] ) * 2018, this one ( [LINK] ), about 4.5 hours, 177-page transcript (but 50 pages of those are Knuth's CV!) * 2018, by the Computer History Museum, 1.5 hours, specifically about the earliest programs he wrote as an undergrad when he first encountered computers ( [LINK] ): the programs themselves are here: [LINK] (in machine language / assembly) I've watched the Web of Stories one fully (and the others not yet fully)… they are a delight. You can see the way his mind works, and he's someone whose career has spanned basically the entirety of computer science as a separate academic discipline.