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<font size=3>At 09:47 AM 6/7/2003 +0100, Chris Rowley wrote:<br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite>Michael<br><br>
I agree with everything you said, but especiallly this bit:<br><br>
> Not least of Knuth's contributions is that of making his<br>
> program public (not only public, but he went to considerable effort
to<br>
> make it as accessible as
possible).</font></blockquote><x-tab> </x-tab>I
totally agree that it is an unbelievable coup that Knuth's software of
the 1970's survives to this day and remains quite excellent. However, the
language he wrote it in is a complete mess. All the \expandafters and
\csnames and Lord knows what crazy commands, the absence of real floating
point, horrible debugging instruments, not object-oriented, etc. I really
hate to hack this code, and would love it if TeX were completely
rewritten in C++, Delphi, or Java conforming to modern programming
conventions.<br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>By the
way, I have always found it curious that Knuth is such a great computer
theorist and a quite good mathematician, but his computer code (e.g.,
from his multi-volume book on computer algorithms, or his web, tangle,
weave, etc.) is really quite awkward and highly inelegant. A good
computer program should look like a haiku poem, not a tangle of
impenetrable code, IMHO.<br><br>
Best,<br><br>
Herb<br><br>
<br>
<x-sigsep><p></x-sigsep>
<font size=3>Herbert
Gintis
<br>
Emeritus Professor of Economics, University of
Massachusetts
<br>
External Faculty, Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe, NM <br>
15 Forbes Avenue, Northampton, MA 01060 <br>
413-586-7756 (Home Office) 206-984-9873 (Fax)<br>
Recent papers are posted on my
<a href="http://www-unix.oit.umass.edu/~gintis">web site</a>.<br>
Get <b>Game Theory Evolving</b> (Princeton, 2000) at
<a href="http://www.isbn.nu/0691009430/amazon">Amazon.com</a>.<br><br>
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