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When I saw this article in my twitter timeline, I feel really exited to read it. To be honest, organization is probably one of the most important thing we have when working on something complex. Even more today, with all the different way we have to start something. I can start by quoting Joe Armstrong on this one.

Being a young programmer today must be awful—you can choose 20 different programming languages, dozens of framework and operating systemsand you’re paralyzed by choice. There was no paralysis of choice then. You just start doing it because the decision as to which language and things is just made—there’s no thinking about what you should do, you just go and do it.

-- https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/16525.Joe_Armstrong (opens new window)

This is true for computer science but also for all subjects. I remember another quote by Joe Armstrong, I will try to reword it with my own word "start by doing the hard part first, if you can't, start asking question". I think this is the same with Donald Knuth. He tries to find a path in the complexity.

Suppose you want to solve a complicated problem whose solution is unknown; in essence you're an explorer entering into a new world. At first your brain is learning the territory, and you're making tiny steps, baby steps in the world of the problem. But after you've immersed yourself in that problem for awhile then you can start to make giant steps, bigger steps, and you can see many things at once, so your brain is getting ready for a new kind of work. You begin to see both the forest and the trees.

He takes the problem as a whole and try to find patterns. He works with many different point of view, create a summary of the problem until he can easily understand the situation and be "fluent".

When I start to investigate some topic, during the first days I fill up scratch paper like mad [...] I've kept a lot of partially printed sheets instead of throwing them away, so that I can write on the back sides. And I'll use up 20 sheets or more per hour when I'm exploring a problem, especially at the beginning [...] The best test of when I'm about ready to solve a problem is whether or not I can think about it sensibly while swimming, without any paper or notes to help out. Because my mind is getting accustomed to the territory, and finally I can see what might possibly lead to the end.

Donald Knuth humility is really interesting. In his own word, he told us he tought he was not smart than other people. This is the kind of quote everyone should remember. The difference between "smart" people and other is the time used in their own field and their capacity to be open-minded.

I don’t think I was smarter than the other people in my class, but I learned algebra first. A lot of very bright students today don’t see any need for algebra.

On expertise, Donald Knuth said experts have duties, they should share their knowledge to other people but also find pattern in other domains.

I always tell them that now they have a responsibility to the rest of us. Namely, after they have solved their thesis problem and trained their brain for this problem area, they should look around for other, similar problems that require the same expertise.

This sharing thing is even more important than you think for Donald Knuth. Keep our discovery for ourself is a shame and the result should be shared.

I have no sympathy with people who never write up an answer; it's selfish to keep beautiful discoveries a secret.

He works on three or four papers at the same time, or in a "pipeline" way.

I used to have three or four papers always in sort of a pipeline, waiting for their ideas to mature before I would finally prepare them for publication.

Searching a solution to a problem is not only a part of researcher but the goal in many fields.

The process of seeking solutions is certainly a big part of a researcher's life, but really it's in everybody's life.

Donald Knuth reads papers at a slow rate, title and abstracts are not useful to him. He is looking for the method, he is looking at the schemas, graphics, or equations that could look similar with his own knowledge or totally unusual.

When I browse through a journal, the titles and abstracts of papers usually don't help me much, because they emphasize results rather than methods

Reading the whole article is not mandatory. Notes are important to read it again later or continue the reading when needed.

I do find a potentially relevant paper, I generally read it only partway, only until I know where it fits into the table of contents of The Art of Computer Programming. Then I make myself a note, to read it later when I'm writing up that section.

Donald Knuth is using a kind of todo list, starting with the least exiting task first. The goal is to make the job done and switch to another subject.

I schedule my activities in a somewhat peculiar way. Every day I look at the things that I'm ready to do, and choose the one that I like the least, the one that's least fun — the task that I would most like to procrastinate from doing, but for which I have no good reason for procrastination. This scheduling rule is paradoxical because you might think that I'm never enjoying my work at all; but precisely the opposite is the case, because I like to finish a project.

My scheduling principle is to do the thing I hate most on my to-do list.

A PhD is a way to define another mindset than the usual one.

A PhD is awarded for research, meaning that the student has contributed to the state of the world's knowledge [...] My point is that it's a mistake to think of a PhD as a sort of next step after a BS or MS degree [...] It's extremely misleading to rank people on an IQ scale with the idea that the smarter they are, the more suitable they are for a PhD degree; that's not it at all.

Happiness and unhappiness are both important. This is experiences and you will always learn from them.

I mean, if you didn't worry, and if you didn't go through some spells and crises, then you'd be missing a part of life. Even though such things aren't pleasant when you're doing them, they are the defining experiences — things to be glad about in retrospect because they happened.

You cannot be happy all the time, and having 80% of happiness is quite enough.

In fact I've concluded that it's really a good thing for people not to be 100% happy. I've started to live in accordance with a philosophy that can be summed up in the phrase "Point eight is enough," meaning "0.8 is enough.

Don't try to avoid less funny thing, just do it. It will help you but also others.

I know that every large project has some things that are much less fun than others; so I can get through the tedium, the sweeping or whatever else needs to be done. I just do it and get it over with, instead of wasting time figuring out how not to do it.

You should do what is important for you, not following the trend and the mode.

Don’t just do trendy stuff. If something is really popular, I tend to think: back off. I tell myself and my students to go with your own aesthetics, what you think is important.

We cannot understand everything, and this is great, because it gives us humility.

The mystical things I don’t understand give me humility. There are things beyond my understanding.

There is probably something bigger than us, but we can't understand it as human.

I personally think of my belief that God exists although I have no idea what that means. But I believe that there is something beyond human capabilities and it might be some AI. Whatever it is, I do believe that there is something that goes beyond human understanding but that I can try to learn more about how to resonate with whatever that being would like me to do.

# Diggin' my potatoe

# References