Steve Jobs greeted Knuth saying "It's a pleasure to meet you, Professor Knuth. I've read all of your books." Knuth responded "You're full of shit".

Knuth spoke at my brother-in-law's high school graduation, and I was in attendance. My mother in law heard me say that Mr. Knuth was a "big name" in computer science, and therefore decided to force an introduction (I was content with just seeing him speak - "basking in his presence", so to speak). Beet faced, after shaking his hand and a short, awkward silence, I stammered out "I like your books", which just added more hue to the color of my face 1. Of course, "I like your books" is now somewhat of a family joke :)

1 - We did have a short exchange after that, but all I can remember of it is him telling me to "find my own niche". Still trying :).

--MidLifeXis

In reply to Re^2: (OT) Can someone track down this quote, purportedly by Knuth? by MidLifeXis
in thread (OT) Can someone track down this quote, purportedly by Knuth? by Aristotle

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.