Donald Knuth: Writing Process | AI Podcast Clips
00:00:00.000 | - So what's your writing process like?
00:00:03.840 | What's your thinking and writing process like every day?
00:00:07.160 | What's your routine even?
00:00:10.720 | - Yeah, I guess it's actually the best question
00:00:14.840 | because I spend seven days a week doing it.
00:00:19.840 | - You're the most prepared to answer it.
00:00:22.080 | - Yeah, but okay, so the chair I'm sitting in
00:00:27.560 | is where I do--
00:00:28.520 | - It's where the magic happens.
00:00:31.800 | - Well, reading and writing.
00:00:34.120 | The chair is usually sitting over there
00:00:35.760 | where I have other books, some reference books,
00:00:38.600 | but I found this chair which was designed
00:00:43.600 | by a Swedish guy anyway.
00:00:45.880 | Turns out this is the only chair I can really sit in
00:00:48.080 | for hours and hours and not know that I'm in a chair.
00:00:50.760 | But then I have the standup desk right next to us
00:00:54.480 | and so after I write something with pencil and eraser,
00:00:59.080 | I get up and I type it and revise and rewrite.
00:01:03.280 | Standing up.
00:01:06.320 | - The kernel of the idea is first put on paper.
00:01:09.760 | - Yeah.
00:01:10.600 | - That's where--
00:01:11.420 | - Right, and I'll write maybe five programs a week.
00:01:14.820 | Of course, literate programming.
00:01:18.360 | And these are, before I describe something in my book,
00:01:21.840 | I always program it to see how it's working
00:01:23.960 | and I try it a lot.
00:01:25.440 | So, for example, I learned at the end of January,
00:01:30.400 | I learned of a breakthrough by four Japanese people
00:01:35.280 | who had extended one of my methods in a new direction.
00:01:39.680 | And so I spent the next five days writing a program
00:01:43.100 | to implement what they did and then I,
00:01:45.440 | they had only generalized part of what I had done
00:01:49.880 | so then I had to see if I could generalize more parts of it
00:01:52.880 | and then I had to take their approach
00:01:55.720 | and I had to try it out on a couple of dozen
00:01:59.160 | of the other problems I had already worked out
00:02:01.760 | with my old methods.
00:02:03.640 | And so that took another couple of weeks
00:02:05.520 | and then I started to see the light
00:02:09.240 | and I started writing the final draft
00:02:14.160 | and then I would type it up,
00:02:17.640 | involved some new mathematical questions
00:02:20.040 | and so I wrote to my friends
00:02:21.840 | who might be good at solving those problems
00:02:24.920 | and they solved some of them.
00:02:27.920 | So I put that in as exercises
00:02:30.120 | and so a month later, I had absorbed one new idea
00:02:35.120 | that I learned and I'm glad I heard about it in time,
00:02:40.080 | otherwise I wouldn't put my book out
00:02:41.920 | before I'd heard about the idea.
00:02:44.160 | On the other hand, this book was supposed to come in
00:02:46.680 | at 300 pages and I'm up to 350 now.
00:02:49.480 | That added 10 pages to the book
00:02:51.880 | but if I learn about another one,
00:02:54.400 | my publisher's gonna shoot me.
00:02:56.200 | (Lex laughing)
00:02:57.840 | - Well, so in that process, in that one month process,
00:03:02.200 | are some days harder than others?
00:03:04.400 | - Are some days harder than others?
00:03:06.080 | Well, yeah.
00:03:07.420 | My work is fun but I also work hard
00:03:09.480 | and every big job has parts
00:03:12.260 | that are a lot more fun than others.
00:03:14.420 | And so many days I'll say,
00:03:17.040 | why do I have to have such high standards?
00:03:19.480 | Why couldn't I just be sloppy and not try this out
00:03:22.600 | and just report the answer?
00:03:25.360 | But I know that people are counting me to do this
00:03:30.360 | and so, okay, so okay, Don, I'll grit my teeth and do it.
00:03:35.200 | And then the joy comes out when I see that actually,
00:03:39.400 | I'm getting good results and I get,
00:03:42.520 | and even more when I see that somebody
00:03:45.280 | has actually read and understood what I wrote
00:03:47.760 | and told me how to make it even better.
00:03:50.840 | I did wanna mention something about the method.
00:03:55.840 | So I got this tablet here where--
00:03:58.960 | - Wow.
00:04:02.400 | - Where I do the first writing of concepts, okay?
00:04:07.400 | So--
00:04:09.240 | - And what language is that then?
00:04:12.080 | (Lex laughing)
00:04:12.960 | - Right, so take a look at it
00:04:14.680 | but here, you randomly say,
00:04:17.000 | explain how to draw such skewed pixel diagrams, okay?
00:04:20.480 | So I got this paper about 40 years ago
00:04:24.760 | when I was visiting my sister in Canada
00:04:27.280 | and they make tablets of paper
00:04:29.600 | with this nice large size and just the right--
00:04:33.080 | - Very small space between lines.
00:04:34.800 | - Small spaces, yeah, yeah, take a look.
00:04:36.360 | - Maybe I'll also just show it.
00:04:39.520 | - Yeah.
00:04:40.360 | - Yeah, wow.
00:04:44.560 | - You know, I've got these manuscripts
00:04:45.680 | going back to the '60s.
00:04:47.080 | And those are when I'm getting my ideas on paper, okay?
00:04:54.440 | But I'm a good typist.
00:04:55.800 | In fact, I went to typing school when I was in high school
00:04:59.800 | and so I can type faster than I think.
00:05:02.720 | So then when I do the editing, stand up and type,
00:05:06.160 | then I revise this and it comes out a lot different
00:05:09.920 | than what, for style and rhythm and things like that
00:05:14.000 | come out at the typing stage.
00:05:16.160 | - And you type in tech.
00:05:18.040 | - And I type in tech.
00:05:19.320 | - And can you think in tech?
00:05:22.400 | - No.
00:05:23.920 | To a certain extent, I have only a small number
00:05:26.720 | of idioms that I use, like, you know,
00:05:29.600 | I'm beginning a theorem, I do something for,
00:05:31.840 | displayed equation, I do something and so on.
00:05:35.040 | But I have to see it.
00:05:37.200 | - In the way that it's on paper here.
00:05:40.440 | - Yeah, right.
00:05:41.280 | - For example, Turing wrote, what, The Other Direction.
00:05:44.560 | You don't write macros, you don't think in macros.
00:05:49.560 | - Not particularly, but when I need a macro,
00:05:51.200 | I'll go ahead and do it.
00:05:55.000 | But the thing is, I also write to fit.
00:05:57.960 | I mean, I'll change something if I can save a line.
00:06:02.960 | You know, it's like haiku.
00:06:04.920 | I'll figure out a way to rewrite the sentence
00:06:07.000 | so that it'll look better on the page.
00:06:10.320 | And I shouldn't be wasting my time on that,
00:06:12.480 | but I can't resist because I know it's only another 3%
00:06:17.320 | of the time or something like that.
00:06:19.040 | - And it could also be argued that that is what
00:06:22.800 | life is about.
00:06:24.160 | - Ah, yes, in fact, that's true.
00:06:26.660 | Like, I work in the garden one day a week,
00:06:30.560 | and that's kind of a description of my life,
00:06:33.560 | is getting rid of weeds, you know,
00:06:36.000 | removing bugs from programs.
00:06:38.040 | - So, you know, a lot of writers talk about,
00:06:40.720 | you know, basically suffering, the writing processes,
00:06:44.080 | having, you know, it's extremely difficult.
00:06:47.240 | And I think of programming, especially,
00:06:50.280 | or technical writing that you're doing, can be like that.
00:06:53.920 | Do you find yourself, methodologically,
00:06:58.560 | how do you, every day, sit down to do the work?
00:07:02.080 | Is it a challenge?
00:07:03.680 | You kind of say it's, you know, it's fun.
00:07:08.000 | (laughs)
00:07:09.960 | But it'd be interesting to hear if there are non-fun parts
00:07:14.280 | that you really struggle with.
00:07:16.280 | - Yeah, so the fun comes when I'm able to put together
00:07:20.780 | ideas of two people who didn't know about each other,
00:07:24.560 | and so I might be the first person
00:07:26.920 | that saw both of their ideas.
00:07:29.360 | And so then, you know, then I get to make the synthesis,
00:07:33.040 | and that gives me a chance to be creative.
00:07:37.280 | But the dredge work is where I've got to
00:07:40.760 | chase everything down to its root.
00:07:42.840 | This leads me into really interesting stuff.
00:07:45.320 | I mean, I learn about Sanskrit, and I,
00:07:47.880 | (laughs)
00:07:48.720 | and, you know, I try to give credit to all the authors,
00:07:51.880 | and so I write to people who know the people,
00:07:56.880 | authors, if they're dead, or I communicate this way.
00:08:01.160 | And I got to get the math right,
00:08:03.600 | and I got to tack all my programs,
00:08:05.620 | try to find holes in 'em.
00:08:07.960 | And I rewrite the programs after I get a better idea.
00:08:11.960 | - Is there ever dead ends?
00:08:14.080 | - Dead ends?
00:08:14.920 | Oh yeah, I throw stuff out, yeah.
00:08:17.200 | One of the things that I,
00:08:18.480 | I spend a lot of time preparing a major example
00:08:22.880 | based on the game of baseball.
00:08:24.480 | And I know a lot of people who,
00:08:27.640 | for whom baseball is the most important thing in the world.
00:08:31.960 | But I also know a lot of people
00:08:33.880 | for whom cricket is the most important,
00:08:35.520 | in the world, or soccer or something.
00:08:38.160 | - Soccer, yeah.
00:08:39.000 | - And I realized that if I had a big example,
00:08:43.160 | I mean, it was gonna have a fold-out illustration
00:08:44.960 | and everything.
00:08:45.920 | And I was saying, well,
00:08:46.760 | what am I really teaching about algorithms here,
00:08:48.760 | where I had this baseball example?
00:08:51.920 | And if I was a person who knew only cricket,
00:08:55.520 | wouldn't they, what would they think about this?
00:08:58.360 | And so I've ripped the whole thing out,
00:09:00.040 | but I had something that would have really appealed
00:09:04.280 | to people who grew up with baseball
00:09:06.080 | as a major theme in their life.
00:09:09.320 | - Which is a lot of people, but.
00:09:11.360 | - But just, yeah.
00:09:12.520 | - But still a minority.
00:09:14.080 | - Small minority.
00:09:14.920 | I took out bowling, too.
00:09:16.280 | - Even a smaller minority.
00:09:19.840 | (laughing)
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