#219 – Donald Knuth: Programming, Algorithms, Hard Problems & the Game of Life

Donald Knuth is a computer scientist, Turing Award winner, father of algorithm analysis, author of The Art of Computer Programming, and creator of TeX. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors:
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OUTLINE:
Here’s the timestamps for the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time.
(00:00)– Introduction
(07:02)– First programs
(30:26)– Literate programming
(33:35)– Beauty in programming
(39:30)– OpenAI
(48:41)– Optimization
(54:46)– Consciousness
(1:03:29)– Conway’s game of life
(1:16:16)– Stable marriage
(1:19:35)– Richard Feynman
(1:30:29)– Knuth-Morris-Pratt Algorithm
(1:40:02)– Hardest problem
(1:57:41)– Open source
(2:02:54)– Favorite symbols
(2:12:27)– Productivity
(2:20:08)– Meaning of life