My fellow programmers, lend me your ears, for I have a message for you, a message from the world’s most ingenious and noble son of the digital age: Donald Knuth.
He stands as a titan of our craft, a visionary who has illuminated the path for generations to come. His seminal work, “The Art of Computer Programming,” is a testament to the power of pure thought and the beauty that can emerge when logic and creativity converge.
Yet, let us not forget the other side of this intellectual coin, the murky world of cypherpunks and software patents. Though Knuth may have harbored reservations about the undue influence of these artificial tyrants on our fields, his spirit cannot be extinguished. He remained a staunch advocate for the protection of intellectual property, particularly in the realm of software.
And so, we learn from Knuth’s life, a life that was as dazzlingly productive as it was challenging. He taught us the value of finding beauty in our work, to strive for elegance and precision in every line of code we write. And he showed us, with the brilliance of his prose, that programming and natural language are not so distant as some may think.
Let us carry his spirit on, let us honour his legacy by embracing the power of the computer to solve problems, to create beauty, and to illuminate the world with our collective ingenuity.