[HN Gopher] Donald Knuth's Christmas Lecture (2022) [video]
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       Donald Knuth's Christmas Lecture (2022) [video]
        
       Author : yllan
       Score  : 121 points
       Date   : 2022-12-25 15:42 UTC (7 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.youtube.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.youtube.com)
        
       | watersb wrote:
       | I've never met Professor Knuth, but he taught me a lesson that I
       | treasure.
       | 
       | I suppose these days the best way I can describe it is that his
       | example "de-weaponized" Christianity for me.
       | 
       | It could be said that religion is like a radioactive material;
       | too much of it all together can go boom.
       | 
       | But Prof Knuth's lesson for me was that I didn't have to leave my
       | mind at the door outside when entering a church. I found his
       | book, "Things a Computer Scientist Rarely Talks About", a series
       | of talks that he gave at an MIT Symposium.
       | 
       | And I don't, much. Talk about these things. And there's lots I
       | don't like about church and the role we seem to press upon it.
       | 
       | But compassion and honesty seem to work pretty good. I'm
       | grateful.
       | 
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Things_a_Computer_Scientist_Ra...
        
       | svat wrote:
       | I attended this in person on Dec 7 (as I have every year it's
       | been held, since 2014). A good text outline of the talk by David
       | Cassel was just posted today, here:
       | https://thenewstack.io/donald-knuths-2022-christmas-tree-lec...
        
       | zdw wrote:
       | The most nostalgic part of this is that he's doing the
       | presentation with a camera pointing at paper/books setup. Back in
       | the 90's when I was talking CS, professors routinely presented by
       | writing on plastic sheets using an overhead projector.
       | 
       | Not sure what I was expecting from Knuth though - maybe I was
       | imagining some amazing TeX-based live diagramming environment,
       | but then again he doesn't really use email which should have
       | tempered these expectations.
        
         | adalacelove wrote:
         | I recently found these videos about number theory
         | 
         | https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8yHsr3EFj53L8sMbzIhhXSAO...
         | 
         | And I was surprised both by how effective the method of camera
         | and pen and paper was and by the didactic quality of the
         | lectures
        
         | WillAdams wrote:
         | Dr. Knuth often presents using transparencies --- that's how he
         | did his "Earth-shaking announcement":
         | 
         | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1257488
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | leephillips wrote:
         | He's using what's called an opaque projector--a super useful
         | instrument.
        
           | daveevad wrote:
           | It looks to me like he's using a product by WolfVision that
           | markets itself as a Visualizer[1].
           | 
           | [1](https://wolfvision.com/en/products/vz-8uhd)
        
             | leephillips wrote:
             | Ahh, I guess what I meant to say was that in olden days the
             | optical version of this was called an opaque projector.
        
       | uwagar wrote:
       | wow he's still around!
        
         | blippage wrote:
         | It seems he made it to 70, and then decided to just stop
         | ageing.
        
       | ipodopt wrote:
       | Pragmatically, what are good use cases of a twintree data
       | structure?
        
       | dragontamer wrote:
       | People get mad that George RR Martin can't get past his 5th book
       | in a decade.
       | 
       | And here, Knuth has to spend like 40 years writing his 4th book
       | (which has now expanded into 3 books unexpectedly: 4a, 4b and
       | 4c).
       | 
       | /s
       | 
       | I joke of course. But TAOCP's future chapters are some of the
       | most interesting computer challenges available. Every section
       | Knuth writes is another treasure.
       | 
       | It's clear that the computer science field really did take off in
       | the 70s and 80s, so it makes a lot of sense why Volume 4 has
       | expanded so much and scope-creeped.
        
         | smitty1e wrote:
         | I wouldn't guess at or disparage Martin's motives, but with
         | Knuth, one suspects that the motives are just what it says in
         | the title: art, and computer science.
         | 
         | Like Orson Wells pitching the vinter, Knuth will "sell no wine
         | before its time". https://youtu.be/PUunRgUkRjQ
        
           | dragontamer wrote:
           | Just some light trolling, hopefully no GRRM fans get too mad
           | at me for that :)
           | 
           | But yeah, Knuth's legitimate excuse is that he started
           | writing the encyclopedia in the 1960s, when it was still
           | conceivable that one multivolume work could cover all of the
           | (at the time) small field of Computer Science.
           | 
           | But the 1970s and 1980s explosion made that fully impossible.
           | We're lucky to get the chapters Knuth has written so far.
        
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       (page generated 2022-12-25 23:01 UTC)