What does Knuth mean by

> I particularly like his definitinon of a bad programmer. (My personal record is about 12 years.)

here?

tjr 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

The article describes a bad programmer as one whose programs “die young”. I would guess that Knuth is saying is that the longest one of his programs lived (was used?) for 12 years?

If that is what he meant, I presume this remark was written well in the past, as TeX has lasted way more than 12 years.

	▲	bdunks 8 hours ago \| parent [-]
		That makes sense. His cover letter is dated 1974, and TeX was released 1978.

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syncsynchalt 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The note is actually from Chuck Baker, the editor of that issue of Datamation.

You're not alone in assuming DEK wrote the note, a lot of people seem to attribute it to Knuth.

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svat 5 hours ago | parent [-]

I see. I was talking about not the article itself, but this handwritten note on the front page:

> This article from Datamation is by someone from ADR - the name might be Moore. (It wasn't meant to be anonymous; that was accidental). A lot of people who knew me thought I wrote it. I wish I had!

> I particularly like his definition of a bad programmer. (My personal record is about 12 years.)

The scan comes from Knuth's personal collection scanned by the Computer History Museum. Many of the documents have similar notes by Knuth, so I assumed this was by him too. Though on closer look, I'm not so sure the handwriting is the same. (It would be ironic if a note about misattribution gets misattributed.) How do you know the note is by Chuck Baker?

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