Donald Knuth's Christmas tree lecture, 2022

[howardpc]

https://thenewstack.io/donald-knuths-2022-christmas-tree-lecture-is-about-trees/

[Thaddy]

As always, enlightening, even if by a person who dismissed - intial - Pascal! 

[MarkMLl]

As always, enlightening, even if by a person who dismissed - intial - Pascal! 

:-/ When making a statement like that, one has to consider that there was an enormously complex political situation at Stanford between the head of Department- John McCarthy-, Wirth- who'd recently moved back to Europe- and everybody else- who valued their careers.

MarkMLl

[Thaddy]

My observation over the years is that people who value their carreer are often - not always - less talented and more conservative, whereas risk takers, that take their carreer - in the sense of employment - less serious tend to be the jewells in the sense of new idea's.

[MarkMLl]

My observation over the years is that people who value their carreer are often - not always - less talented and more conservative, whereas risk takers, that take their carreer - in the sense of employment - less serious tend to be the jewells in the sense of new idea's.

No doubt. But my feeling is that Wirth wouldn't have resigned from the ALGOL-68 committee- followed by more than a third of the other members- if he'd not found himself actively opposed by his former head of department who already had significant standing in the community. It was, basically, a very ugly situation.

MarkMLl