any info on if this is true? also, did Knuth mean Job's was full of it that "he ...

antiform · on Oct 18, 2008

Maybe Knuth was more of a rebel back in the day, but somehow I can't imagine him having that sort of response.

In Randall Munroe's Authors@Google talk [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJOS0sV2a24], Don Knuth asks him a question at ~21:30 and at ~25:30 Randall asks Knuth about this very anecdote. Knuth's response is "I've been told this story a number of times...but I was impressed by him more than he was impressed by me."

cliff · on Oct 18, 2008

well, http://www.literateprogramming.com/byte1996.html has an interview with Knuth saying that Jobs had talked to him so it's potentially possible:

Knuth: Steve Jobs once told me in 1980 that he had a vision where every day we'd get a CD-ROM with a thousand brand new programs on it, and that although each program would cost just $5, the number of potential users for each program would be high enough that software developers would get a good return on their work.