[pixelmonkey]

“Email is a wonderful thing for people whose role in life is to be on top of things. But not for me; my role is to be on the bottom of things. What I do takes long hours of studying and uninterruptible concentration.”

-Donald Knuth

[atmosx]

At that time made sense. It’s clear what he is trying to say: “I won’t engage every excited programmer who wants to know this or that via email, like others tend to do even for little things”.

In 2026 email is the most time-respecting communication medium other than a classic, physical letter.

[mghackerlady]

Knuth is such a wonderful guy, his books are amazing

[j45]

In that case, emails like IM's can be batched together during a 30 minute block twice a day.

[shepherdjerred]

That’s what he does except it’s every 6 mo

https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/email.html

[nicbou]

What a clever sentence!