From: Donald Knuth - My advice to young people (93/97)
譯者: 李秋豪
原文
Donald Knuth (b. 1938), American computing pioneer, is known for his greatly influential multi-volume work, 'The Art of Computer Programming', his novel 'Surreal Numbers', his invention of TeX and METAFONT electronic publishing tools and his quirky sense of humour. [Listener: Dikran Karagueuzian]
TRANSCRIPT: If somebody said what advice would I give to a... a young person - they always ask that funny kind of a question. And... and I think one of the things that... is... that I would... that would sort of come first to me is this idea of, don't just believe that because something is trendy, that it's good. I'd probably go the other extreme where if... if something... if I find too many people adopting a certain idea I'd probably think it's wrong or if, you know, if... if my work had become too popular I probably would think I had to change. This is, of course, ridiculous but... but I see the... I see the... the other side of it too... too often where people will... will do something against their own gut instincts because they think the community wants them to do it that way, so people will... will work on a certain... a certain subject even though they aren't terribly interested in it because they think that they'll get more prestige by working on it. I think you get more prestige by doing good science than by doing popular science because... because if... if you go with... with what you really think is... is important then it's a higher chance that it really is important in the long run and it's the long run which... which has the most benefit to the world. So... so usually when I'm... when I'm writing a book or... or publishing a book it's... it's different from books that have been done before because I feel there's a need for such a book, not because that... there was somebody saying please write such a book, you know, or... or that other people have... have already done that... that kind of thing. So follow your own instincts it seems to me is better than follow the... the herd. I... my friend Peter Wegner told me in the '60s that I should, for Art of Computer Programming, I shouldn't write the... I shouldn't write the whole series first, I should... I should first write a... a reader's digest of... of it and then expand on the parts afterwards. That would probably work for him better than... much better... but I... I work in a completely different way. I have to see... I have to see something to the point where I've surrounded it and... and, sort of, totally understood it before I'm comf... before I can write about it with any confidence and so that's the... that's the way I work, I don't... I don't want to write about a high level thing unless I've fully understood a low level thing. Other people have completely different strengths I... I know but... but for me, I... you know, I wrote a book about the... a few verses of the Bible, once I had... once I understood those verses and... and sort of everything I could find in the library about a small part of the Bible, all of a sudden I had firm pegs on which I could hang other knowledge about it. But if... but if I went through my whole life only under... without any... any in depth knowledge of any part then it all seems to be flimsy and... and to me doesn't... doesn't give me some satisfaction. Well the... the classic phrase is that liberal education is to learn something about everything and everything about something and... and I like this idea about learning everything about... about an area before you feel... if you don't know something real solid then... then you never have... have enough confidence. A lot of times I'll have to read through a lot of material just in order to write one sentence somehow because... because my sentence will then have... have... I'll choose words that... that make it more convincing than if I... than if I'm... than if I really don't have the knowledge it'll somehow come out implicitly in... in my writing. These are little sort-of-vague thoughts that I have when reflecting over... over some of the directions that distinguish what I've done from what... what I've seen other people doing.
譯文
如果有人問到我會給年輕人什麼建議——他們總是問這些好玩的問題，第一個浮現在我腦海中的想法就是不要認為主流的東西就好。我可能會有些極端，如果我發現很多人都接受一個觀點，那我可能會認為它是錯誤的，比如我的某個成果變得很出名我就會想辦法做一些改變。
當然，這聽起來有些荒謬，但是我确實看到了很多例子——很多人會違背他們内心的直覺因為社群/大衆希望他們那麼做，是以他們都開始在一個他們并不感興趣的領域下功夫以期得到更多的名譽。而我認為如果你研究“好的”科學而非“大衆/受歡迎”的科學你才會得到更多的名譽。因為從長遠來看，做你認為重要的事會更可能對這個世界産生最有益的影響。
通常當我出一本書的時候，這本書是不同于現存的書的——我出這本書是因為我認為有這個需要而非有人恭維我出這樣的書或者因為别人已經寫過此類的書。遵從你的内心而非主流大衆。60年代我寫《計算機程式設計藝術》的時候，我的朋友Peter Wegner告訴我應該先列出來讀者的口味然後從這些點擴充而非直接寫整個序章。這可能對他很有幫助，但是我完全不是這麼想的——我必須對“圈出”的關鍵點完全了解才會有寫下去的信心。
我不會寫高層次的東西除非我完全了解了低層次的東西。我知道别人擅長的和我完全不同，我僅僅寫出“聖經”的一小部分詩，當我完全了解這一小部分後，突然間我就能獲得關于這一部分的其他知識。如果我的一生都沒有得到深層次的知識，那對我來說是淺薄和不滿足的。有句話說的很經典：素質教育是“通百藝,專一長”。我喜歡“專一長”這個說法。如果你不能對某個領域的知識掌握的非常牢固，你就不會有足夠的信心。很多時候我查閱大量的資料僅僅是為了寫出一句話，因為我希望我的語句足夠有說服力而非我自己都不知道這句到底是怎麼來的。
這大緻就是我觀察思考自己做過的和别人做過的事而産生的一些想法。