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Comment by _delirium | Hacker News Reader

Do you say the same of all people who are paid as professors? For example, Knuth has time to do all that "algorithms", write books about Jesus, and give away software for free, because he doesn't need to work for a living.

As far as I can tell, Hardy was born to a fairly middle-class family (parents were schoolteachers), and got his job at Oxford because he was one of the best English mathematicians of his generation.

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None of what I said was insulting or wrong.

Hardy didn't "work" for a living, to him mathematics was an obsessive hobby. He had a very strict routine; get up, walk, maths, watch cricket, tea, maths, eat, etc. He almost had the same daily routine as Kant, another bore, except the cricket.

Also, class has nothing to do with it. He was born into the imperial crown, and given his education, he was guaranteed a post in India or Africa and a "handsome life". The man was no Russel; he was an elitist who was indifferent to reaping the rewards of colonialism.

Knuth is very much a proletariat. No comparison.

Apart from your evidence-free assertion that there's "no comparison", I don't see much difference, except in personal attitudes (which isn't the point of my comparison). Knuth doesn't "work" for a living; to him computer science is an obsessive hobby. He has a very strict routine, which even involves using two computers, one with the internet and one without, and specific times set aside for answering correspondence versus writing versus doing other things. He's been working on TAOCP for decades because it's his obsession, not because it's a job. He can't imagine doing anything else, which is why he keeps writing it even in retirement. He has never taken a non-academic job in his life; he became a professor at age 25, and remained one until his retirement.

And really, "whining, privileged bore" wasn't intended as an insult?

Also, how does Russell fare better in your comparison? An aristocrat who wrote "In Praise of Idleness" while never having to work a day in his life? The archetype of the upper-class, socialist professor?

What are you going on about? They're completely different types of mathematicians. Knuth is a generalist/educator/computer scientist. He is not only one of the most prolific in the field, but also chairs journals and programs, develops software, does media appearances, maintains extensive correspondences, ALL while he teaches.

Hardy didn't have a fraction of these "distractions".

You think I'm dismissive of Hardy because of his academic career. I'm not. It's his colonial era, easy ranks and easier money, that I'm critical of.

"It's his colonial era, easy ranks and easier money, that I'm critical of."

Methinks somebody is jelly...

But really, why should we judge mathematicians by their social stature? Should we also judge Tony Hawk for his lack of sea-turtle related knowledge? It's completely beside the point, you're just looking for something to complain about.

Don't twist my words. I have read Hardy's work more carefully than any other author, having cut my teeth on the Course.

The colonial and classist attitude is pervasive and shapes his mathematical aesthetics.

So what?

> He has never taken a non-academic job in his life;

That's not quite right. He did at least consulting work outside of academia. As I quote him in Coders at Work: "For example, some of the best work I did for Burroughs Corporation was to debug their hardware designs. Their engineers would show me the specs for their computer and I would look at it and I would try to construct examples where they would be off by 1 or something. I got more than 200 bugs out of their B-5000–series machines before they went into production, although it had passed the simulators."

"Hardy didn't "work" for a living, to him mathematics was an obsessive hobby."

That applies to a good number of Silicon Valley programmers. Do they not need to "work" for a living, simply because they can get paid for their obsessive hobbies?

Silicon Valley programmers have to compete with a growing pool of domestic and global workforce.

Hardy was a Cambridge brat; people like him were born & bred for foreign posts. The closest thing today might be being born anglo, going through military academies all your life, then graduating West Point: you ARE guaranteed certain top positions for life.

You seem to have a lot of righteous anger on this topic.

Is that all you're contributing to the already long and offtopic discussion? really?

I was hoping you would use it as a lead-in to discuss why you're so angry about a man who died 65 years ago and who devoted his life to doing things that he thought would have no impact on the world.

Seriously, this is just baffling. If there wasn't a clear time-separation, I would go so far as to think that it reeked of personal grudge.

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