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| Donald Knuth – The Patron Saint of Yak Shaves (yakshav.es) | ||
| recommended by 3 users | 2017 | 93 points by ingve | computing history | original thread | | ||
| 3 users recommended this thread. What they said: |
| macintux Mar 5, 2024 | on: This Is Knuth 3:16 (2002) | context |
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lstamour Jan 9, 2022 | on: Donald Knuth – The Patron Saint of Yak Shaves (2017) | context
Still a fun read. Previous HN comments (from a submission a few years back): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15733381 |
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ngriffiths May 7, 2026 | on: RaTeX: KaTeX-compatible LaTeX rendering engine in pure Rust | context
It's kinda fascinating how dominant LaTeX is, how nice its output is, how respected Knuth is as a computer scientist, and at the same time how totally awful it feels to use it. Hard to figure out how it can be so good and so bad at once. Posts/discussion I found interesting: - http://www.goodmath.org/blog/2008/01/10/the-genius-of-donald... - https://tex.stackexchange.com/q/24671 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15733381 In particular it's interesting how people seem to think TeX itself is actually quite nice to use but its popularity and LaTeX packages created a huge mess of a system. |
| Also recommended by people who recommended this: | ||
| 1. | The history of fire escapes (noidea.dog) | |
| recommended by 2 users | 2023 | 1 point by mooreds | original thread | | ||
For anyone who hasn’t stumbled upon it, this is an amazing read.
Donald Knuth - The Patron Saint of Yak Shaves
- https://yakshav.es/the-patron-saint-of-yakshaves/
Discussions:
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29861678
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15733381