Panicz Maciej GodekPaniczGodek@functional.cafe
Nov 4, 2025, 9:12 PMI wonder what would happen if someone locked Donald Knuth with Ted Nelson in a small room together for a few days.
Both are still alive, so should be possible.
Anyone?
Replies
- Panicz Maciej GodekPaniczGodek@functional.cafeNov 4, 2025, 9:19 PM
OMG they are almost exactly the same age
Nov 4, 2025, 9:46 PMI’ve met both. Don said “I admire what you have done”. Ted asked “Who are you?”
I still respect both for their contributions. This is to say that they are very different people.
- Panicz Maciej GodekPaniczGodek@functional.cafeNov 4, 2025, 9:59 PM
@k9ox yeah, I feel that there's a fatal flaw in Ted Nelson, who seems to hold a very low opinion of "techies that always do everything wrong" (but apparently failed to deliver any software that people would actually use)
But this idea came to my head when I was reading the beginning of the TeX book:
"A large piece of software like TEX has inherent complexity that cannot be reduced below a certain level of difficulty, although each individual part is fairly simple by itself. The WEB language is intended to make the algorithms as readable as possible, by reflecting the way the individual program pieces fit together and by providing the cross-references that connect different parts"
I thought to my self, "OMG, Nelson would be so angry reading this, because Knuth is making another system to simulate paper in a computer"
And my second thought was that Nelson probably wouldn't read this, because he doesn't love algorithms and precision (apparently preferring poetic vagueness), but that he would gain so much if he did.