I was fortunate enough to get one of the last physical reward checks which was accompanied by a printout of my e-mail, written on in pencil.
Fortunately, it survived a house flood which destroyed the book it was in, so now the envelope it's in is prominently displayed on a rack in my living room and would be one of the things I'd grab in the event of a fire.
Every so often, when a co-worker knows who Knuth is I bring it in to a workplace to show off.
Extremely envious of this! I don't own a copy of Art of Computer Programming, so I did spend a not-insignificant amount of reading through some of Knuth's other writings trying to find mistakes that no one else has found, and I came up empty handed. There might be mistakes ripe for the picking in there, but I'm afraid I'm not quite smart enough to find them.
Still, a guy can dream. If I ever pick up Art of Computer Programming I might give it a go again.
I once emailed Dijkstra. I was 14, it was the mid 90s, and I had just connected to the real internet a few months ago. I had just come across his name as a prominent computer scientist. I wanted to be one just like him, so I asked him what I should do.
He replied. it was 3 full paragraphs. He told me to study algorithms and to learn python.
I have a blog post by Norvig where he gently chides me for wasting enormous amounts of CPU trying to find a counterexample to the Beale Conjecture.
Not exactly frameable, and not exactly something to be proud of, but I got a chuckle nonetheless.
Fortunately, it survived a house flood which destroyed the book it was in, so now the envelope it's in is prominently displayed on a rack in my living room and would be one of the things I'd grab in the event of a fire.
Every so often, when a co-worker knows who Knuth is I bring it in to a workplace to show off.