OpenEuphoria

Re: direction

• Posted by Everett Williams <rett at GVTC.COM> Mar 23, 2000
• 439 views

Kat wrote:

>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Jiri Babor" <J.Babor at GNS.CRI.NZ>
>To: <EUPHORIA at LISTSERV.MUOHIO.EDU>
>Sent: Thursday, March 23, 2000 6:23 PM
>Subject: Re: direction
>
snip

For Jiri, and in answer to all others, I will quote Donald Knuth, the author of
APL, in an interview mainly about TeX, one of his other minor creations.

"I do strongly think that people, when they start throwing computers at
something, they think that it's a whole new ballgame, so why should they
study the past. I think that is a terrible mistake. But also, I love to read
historical source materials, so I couldn't resist. I had a good excuse to study
these things, and the more I looked at it, the more interesting it was. But I
don't think responsible computer scientists should be unaware of hundreds of
years of history that went before us. So that was just a natural thing to
approach it that way, for me."

The quote is in reference to a comment made about the beauty of the
math capabilities of TeX and their similarity to some of the older methods
of expressing things like calculus integration. I would be willing to be that
if one were to take the time to read a basic APL primer, that it would all
appear quite a bit more logical than it does at first glance. That doesn't
mean that I like APL or that I have personally gotten beyond very basic
programming in the language, and that long ago. Knuth explains things
very well and in language that most people can understand when he is
talking about things within their ken. But, I will freely admit, Knuth is
completely beyond me in more than a few areas. Most of what any
modern compiler jock like Robert has learned came and still comes from
Knuth. He is only 62 and is still active in the field. Just go to google.com
and enter Donald Knuth and read just a little bit of what is there and your
casual surety that whatever it is that you "like" is more than just that will
go the way of the dodo bird.

Everett L.(Rett) Williams
rett at gvtc.com