Voting Station

Donald Knuth

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Computer Tech

The Resume

    (January 10, 1938- )
    Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin
    Created the WEB and CWEB computer programming systems, the TeX computer typesetting system, the METAFONT font definition language and the Computer Modern family of typefaces
    Wrote the multi-volume 'The Art of Computer Programming'
    Used to pay $2.56 ('a hexidecimal dollar') to people who found errors in his books

Why he might be annoying:

    The 'k' in his last name ain't silent; it is pronounced 'ka-nooth.'
    He stopped using email in 1990, saying 'My goal is to do this communication [with people with questions or comments about his books] efficiently, in batch mode -- like one day, every three months.
    One of his hobbies is photographing diamond-shaped highway signs. (As of 2012, he had 1150 different signs.)
    He said, 'I can't go to a restaurant and order food because I keep looking at the fonts in the menu.'

Why he might not be annoying:

    His first published article was 'The Potrzebie System of Weights and Measures' in Mad magazine (1957).
    While in college, he rewrote the assembly and compiler codes for the school's IBM mainframe computer.
    He wrote a program to analyze the individual contributions of the members of the college basketball team, which was so novel at the time that it got reported by Newsweek and the CBS Evening News.
    He was described by a colleague as 'the first great mathematician to take computer science seriously.'
    The index to one of his books included the entries 'Circular definition: See Definition, circular" and "Definition, circular: See Circular definition.'
    He said, 'Science is what we understand well enough to explain to a computer. Art is everything else we do.'

Credit: C. Fishel


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    In 2023, Out of 3 Votes: 66.67% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 3 Votes: 33.33% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 10 Votes: 80.0% Annoying
    In 2020, Out of 1 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2019, Out of 2 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2018, Out of 1 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2017, Out of 5 Votes: 60.0% Annoying
    In 2016, Out of 8 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2015, Out of 16 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2014, Out of 48 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2013, Out of 3 Votes: 66.67% Annoying