Good People Work Hard
Recently, I was looking at some documentation for LaTeX, specifically how the DVI format file was created. I found out that DVI was designed by a student of Knuth called David Fuchs around the end of the 70s, when the first laser printers were being designed.
The whole story of DVI design can be read on an interview by David Fuchs to tug.org. It is a fascinating description of the state of printing 30 years ago. However, the most interesting part of it is a story that shows how really good people work hard to achieve their goals:
I, of course, wrote the DVI-to-CRS software, which also required some tricky font caching (the algorithm for which is the basis of my only published paper, which was actually written by my co-author, guess who?). Those were some intense days of working together, getting it all to work. The CRS was in a cramped basement room, and I had to load and unload each sheet of photographic paper in the darkness, and feed it into the triple-bath developer. Any bug could be potentially in my code or Knuth’s firmware, and as I mentioned, debugging wasn’t easy. After a number of very long days, I came in one morning, and came into Knuth’s office just as he was arriving and handing a stack of legal paper to his secretary. “Here’s a paper I wrote, please type it in,” he told her. I was floored. We’d been working night and day; did he write the paper in his sleep?
It is not uncommon that, in the middle of an important project, you need to work extra hard. But Knuth, despite working all day to make his code work, still spent an unknown amount of time writing papers (maybe during sleep…), so he wouldn’t compromise his scientific output. It just reminds me that to be really good, it is not enough to have good ideas. You also need to work hard.
Next time you feel overwhelmed by your projects, think about this.
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About the Author
Carlos Oliveira holds a PhD in Systems Engineering and Optimization from University of Florida. He works as a software engineer, with more than 10 years of experience in developing high performance, commercial and scientific applications in C++, Java, and Objective-C. His most Recent Book is Practical C++ Financial Programming.
maybe consider that some very smart people have sleeping disorders that aren’t very much fun to have most of the time.
By Mike on Oct 27, 2009