Donald Knut: “My advice to the young” (93/97) and “Feeling the need to assert oneself” (9/97)

My advice to young

People ask me: “What advice would I give to young people?”
Funny question. Here the main idea is that you do not need to blindly believe in something, just because it is popular now.

The other extreme is characteristic of me - when I see that the majority accepts an idea, I assume that perhaps it is not true. For example, if my work becomes very popular, I understand that something needs to be changed in it.
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This, of course, is silly, but I often observed how people did something contrary to their instincts, thinking that society wanted them to do just that. Those. people will work on a project in which they are not very interested, just for the sake of prestige. I think it’s more prestigious to do good scientific work than is popular, because if you believe in your business, there is a greater chance that in the end you will be able to do something important for the whole world. So when I write a book or publish a book, it differs from others in that I feel its necessity, and not just do it at the request of someone, as many others did.

Following your intuition is better than following the herd.




02:00 My friend Peter Wegner said in the 60s about my book The Art of Programming that I should not write it all. First I should post a summary, and then go into the material. For him, this would probably be better, but I work in a completely different way. I must fully understand the essence of what I'm working on and fully understand the subject before I can write about it with confidence. This is how I write something: I don’t want to write only about the tip of the iceberg, not seeing it all.

02:54 Others have completely different strengths, but, you know, I even once wrote a book about just a few verses from the Bible, after I understood these verses ... I read everything I could find about them in libraries, deeply studied what they are about. Superficial knowledge about something just does not bring me satisfaction. There is a common phrase that humanitarian education is to learn something about everything, and all about one thing. I like the idea of ​​finding out everything. There will never be complete confidence in something, if you do not know it to the end.

04:02 Often I had to read a lot, just to write one sentence, because then my sentence, my words, would be more convincing. If I do not have enough knowledge, somehow it will appear in the text. It is to such, perhaps not entirely clear, conclusions I came up by comparing my work with the work of other people.

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Feeling the need to assert themselves

My parents were asked if I should be transferred to an external classroom in another class, because I did a good job at school. (Actually, I was born in January, that is, I was older than most of my classmates, because if I were born in December, I would have gone to school a year earlier, so I was one of the oldest in my class.) time, many guys are so pushed forward by classes. One of my friends, he graduated from the institute at the age when they usually enter high school.

I am glad that my parents opposed this, because it gave me time for many elective classes, so I always did a lot of things. I mean sport, I was a terrible athlete. I was tall, but my left hand never knew what my right hand was doing, so I was put into the game after we were ahead of the opponent by 50 points, but I was the judge, I scored.

01:06 I scored well, so I became the judge-secretary of many teams at the school, and at the institute too. Cross country teams, basketball teams, baseball teams. In the end, I received 6 or 7 sports awards, being not at all capable of playing sports.

And here I am sitting there, at the referee’s table during a basketball tournament, playing a game, rattling non-stop to embarrass another judge, so that he is confused when they ask “who is cheating?” And I could say who, of course, based on that our team would be now profitable.

01:59 The guy was really confused about what I was saying. In any case, I did not win a lot of games at the accountants' table, but I was with the team and scored at that time.

I had time for all this optional activities, because my parents did not throw me forward to classes, and, you know, I had time and study well and do many other things. Although I did well in school, I still have some kind of inferiority complex, or something. I'm still trying to get better. I think I’m not very good at it, actually. Therefore, I studied hard and got 100 points on exams, I tried to prove that I know.

03:03 If I was confident in myself, I’m very sure, I wouldn’t do a lot of work. This is how a child sees it. I was always afraid that I would turn out badly, so I tried hard at school. And here it came to the recommendations of the institute. Everyone at my school went through a whole bunch of tests, national tests, for future career guidance, for what kind of work you are good for. I remember that for this test I would have to be an architect and not need to be a veterinarian. I got very few points in the vet profession, but the architect would have come out of me.

04:06 I won scholarships in different institutions, But the deputy director called me and said: “Don, I think you will fail the institute”. He said: “You know, you did well at school, but the institute is another matter, it’s just too difficult for you, you won’t succeed.”

And now, I was again scared, so when I found myself at the institute, I continued to cram. I enrolled at the Cleveland Institute of Technology and Computer-Aided Design and Programming, which had not yet been merged with the University of the Western Reserve Area.

When I came to the institute, the dean told us, and this is basically a male institution, “guys, look at the person on your left, and at the person on your right. One of you will not be here next year, one of you will fail. ”

05:18 And here I am at the university, and again I am learning all the time, really really hard on things, I had to be like a robot. In high school, our math was not really. I never listened about matan before I went to college. But the textbook on mathematics, which I had at the institute, was really good, there still, you know, at the end there were additional tasks on topics that the teacher did not tell us. These were well-known tasks by matron George Thomas.

06:18 I specifically mention this because it was one of the first books published by Addison-Wesley, and I loved this book so much that later I chose the same publisher to publish my book. In Matan Thomas went first to the text, and then to complex tasks, and our teacher gave us only easy tasks. I, of course, did them. But I also solved additional tasks at the end of the textbook, although the teacher did not ask them.

I was scared that I could not comprehend the matan, so I worked hard at them, and at first it took me more time to do this than my classmates. But a year later, I could solve difficult problems in the same time that my classmates spent on ordinary ones.

07:17 And after that, the mathematical disciplines were not a problem for me, because I knew how to solve problems. My fear played into my hands, because he gave me a strong start, and then I could not make a lot of effort, instead of constantly climbing only to keep up.

To be continued ...

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Translation: Sergey Danshin
Publication support is the Edison company, which develops a video surveillance software package in the operating room , and also designs software for sterilizing medical devices .