2011/06/09

Donald Knuth never told Steve Jobs that he was full of shit - good coders code, great reuse

Donald Knuth never told Steve Jobs that he was full of shit

Posted: 08 Jun 2011 12:20 PM PDT

You have probably all heard the following story about Jobs meeting Knuth for the first time in 1983.

Steve had managed to get Don Knuth, the legendary Stanford professor of computer science, to give a lunchtime lecture to the Mac team. Knuth is the author of at least a dozen books, including the massive and somewhat impenetrable trilogy "The Art of Computer Programming."

I was sitting in Steve's office when Lynn Takahashi, Steve's assistant, announced Knuth's arrival. Steve bounced out of his chair, bounded over to the door and extended a welcoming hand.

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Professor Knuth," Steve said. "I've read all of your books."

"You're full of shit," Knuth responded.

This story is actually not true.

I was watching Randall Munroe's (from xkcd) talk at Google when suddenly Knuth appeared out of nowhere. Randall used the opportunity and asked him to verify this story. Knuth said he gets asked this all the time and that it was not true. I cut that part of the video and put it on YouTube: