On September 30, members of Stanford's Computer Science Department gathered to bid farewell to Phyllis Astrid Benson Winkler, on the occasion of her retirement after 32 years of service. During those years she was one of the key reasons for our department's successes; thus she indirectly had a substantial influence on the progress of computer science as a whole. We appreciated her intelligence, her efficiency, her world-class expertise at producing beautiful technical documents, her team spirit, her willingness to go the extra mile, and her contagious laughter.
I was fortunate to have had Phyllis as my secretary and essential co-pilot during the past 28 years; without her I could not have accomplished nearly as much. She typed more than 200 of my papers, most of which required several rounds of revisions. She buffered all of my mail and telephone messages. She administered the editorial work of more than a dozen technical journals, and helped out with numerous research projects. She made online indexes of all the correspondence in our files. She did all of the initial keyboarding for the new editions of The Art of Computer Programming, Volumes 1 and 3 (see below) --- amounting to more than 1500 printed pages of what printers used to call ``penalty copy'' because it is so hard to do. And so on and so on; what a team we made! And she was simultaneously also serving as secretary for several other faculty members.
When I originally wrote the TeX typesetting system, I intended it to be a tool just for Phyllis and me, but mostly for Phyllis. Soon other people decided to use it too, but Phyllis's influence on the TeX project has nevertheless been enormous. One of the events at her retirement party was the reading of a resolution recently passed by the board of directors of the TeX Users Group, expressing their appreciation for all of her contributions during the past 20 years. I'm sure people all over the world are sad that they will no longer be communicating with her at Stanford, yet wishing her happiness as she changes to a life of voluntary community service.
I can't express in words the enormous debt of gratitude I feel, but I have tried to do that in part by dedicating the book Literate Programming to her. I certainly wish her a long and productive life in retirement."
Thanks for posting it, this is very nice indeed. Kudos to him for sharing the credit. Maybe he's not that of an evil person as I have pictured before. But the discussion around here made me realize once more that there is still a problem lying around here. People tend to attribute the works we see around to a single person when in reality it's a team's work. And I'm not only talking about the very close circle these people are working with but also many others in the service industry that we interact daily in an indirect fashion. This is very dangerous. It makes people think that their work is inferior since it is not as useful as what these "celebrities" are doing and eventually leaving them the only choice to give up and rather worship these people instead. This is what I see everyday.
Also note that, while you can see these kinds of notes lying around, there are also many places these don't exists at all. If I were to know Donald Knuth from his wikipedia article, I would not be aware of his secretary at all. So there is some credit but not to the extend that I would like to see.
I think this is a serious issue that needs to be dealt with. Maybe anonymous writing could be a solution, I dont know..
Why would you ever think of Don Knuth as an evil person?
From my few years of contacts with him in the early 80's (he was on the board of our company, a spin-off from the TeX project), he was one of the most gracious, kind, thoughtful, humble people you could ever meet. And I think anyone who met him would agree.
Personal secretaries used to be fairly common, and don't have to be viewed with disrespect. If you ever work in a large institution, you learn that the secretaries know more about how the organization works than you ever will, and can make your life much better. Most people accept that specialization and division of labor are part of the modern industrial economy.
Knuth is an oddball curmudgeon, and probably a bit autistic (watch his lectures), but he has managed to make the most of his strengths, and contributed to humanity with very little damage.
Well, fame is an indication for what the society value. How else would you measure it? Money? Respect? Something else? Which of these measures secretaries are good at?
>My guess is that his secretary still uses emails even if he's not. So basically he has just transfered his communication tasks to another person and somehow it is ok for him to enslave a person for jobs he doesn't want to do since he's a much more "important" human being. This is pure arrogance.
Sorry what?
Is that part of the very job of a secretary?
Is't not any much "slavery" than you ordering food from a waiter or asking a store assistant for a pair of shoes...
> So basically he has just transfered his communication tasks to another person and somehow it is ok for him to enslave a person for jobs he doesn't want to do since he's a much more "important" human being. This is pure arrogance.
You know that this is like, the basis of entire civilization? The specialization of labour - you do what you're good at, I do what I'm good at, and we exchange the value produced by our work. His secretary is probably being paid for the job, and given that he/she specializes in e-mail correspondence, he/she will be much more efficient with it than Knuth himself could ever be.
> in that regard I don't think secretaries are essential.
Ah, now we've gotten to the very nut of it: you don't think that secretaries are essential. Never mind that the sort of folks who employ them seem to think that they are: you, who aren't in their position, don't, and that's enough.
I'm reminded of pg's famous essay on the Blub Paradox. Programmers who use a semi-powerful language can see that others are less powerful than theirs, but can't see that more powerful languages offer anything much. Likewise, folks at one level of society can easily see that it makes sense to hire others to grow their food and make their clothes, but can't see that it makes sense for others at other levels to hire people to manage their schedules and correspondence.
I'm sorry you think the many people employed as secretaries should lose their jobs because you think their job is "unessential", but that attitude is patronizing and demeaning to the people who hold those positions. This world isn't about you, and you you have neither the right nor the authority to tell them how to live their lives.
Then why not give that choice to everyone else as well? Most of us are working because we're being "threatened with hunger or homelessness". I think it's bad and as a civilization we're reaching the level when we could - and should - end that, but that is a completely orthogonal topic to whether or not secretaries have important jobs.
Which means you have an issue with people doing paid work in general, not Knuth in particular.
I guess you never buy anything too -- or have people e.g. build your house, or the street cleaners take your garbage, the taxi driver to drive you etc.
Are you saying you disagree with the idea of a secretary at all? I mean, handling mail and communication is one of the main tasks of a secretary. If you're against that because he is making someone do tasks he doesn't want, then I imagine you'd also be against the concept garbage men as well. The thing is, they get paid and choose to go into that profession - some may even enjoy it.
So what's wrong with that? Or did you mean something else? I just don't see why someone would question his books/teachings based on his personal strategy for email communication.
It's my responsibility to give people a response, no matter how unpopular they are. Just because I'm saying things people don't want to hear doesn't mean I'm wrong. People tend to ignore/downvote things when it's not in their best interest. I can't stand it, you shouldn't either. If you don't find my ideas appealing don't write stuff like this, don't downvote and also don't upvote. And if you don't have a problem with HN limiting my replies while you could say anything you want to me then you have a serious issue. You need a serious update to your value system if you're fine with people silenced for their ideas.
I'm not entirely sure what you think the job description for a secretary role would be... but normally handling communications is absolutely within its scope.
If you want to argue that the concept of having a secretary in the first place is arrogance, and object to all those roles around the world, go for it. But singling out one person is just flawed logic.
> My secretary also prints out all nonspam email messages addressed to taocp@cs.stanford.edu or knuth-bug@cs.stanford.edu,
She definitely does use email. I don't see what is so wrong with paying someone else to do the necessary time consuming tasks with low priority when you have other high priority things to do. Should there also be no janitors?
Oh, I have read the response on my mobile and now it's gone, I wish it wasn't.
While I appreciate your effort to defend me I don't really need it. I don't mind having these kinds of responses at all. I may actually prefer it. It's the silent downvotes that gets to me, and HN holding me back with my "frequent" replies and whitening my words because God forbids someone could see an opinion they might disagree..
Of course this is no news to me. I'm quite used to having people with opposing views at my position. In fact, I don't think I have been with a person that I can easily relate to for a very long time. In my point of view, the main problem is that there are very deep social problems within our setting and most people doesn't even want to see it. They seem to prefer staying in their comfort zones, doing what they do so far as they have learned growing up while going along the flow. I think this is delusional and I have zero tolerance left for it.
I have come to realize HN community is full of these people. This is not to say there aren't any people I can agree with, it's just that it's extremely difficult to cultivate the conversation when you become a minority. In that regard, HN nowadays is quite an unhealthy formation. This was something I was aware for a long time. I didn't take any action so far because most of the time I'm here for only the links anyways. But links here are filtered by the upvotes/downvotes of this same community. I guess now it's time for me to move forward. I will close my account and hopefully never enter this site again.
Again thanks for your effort, but I think it's much better for people to express what they actually think than to censor them behind big man's words or else communication becomes impossible.
I should have said "you're acting like a clown." But I like the idea of having you realize that making a statement such as "enslaved" in regards to a secretary merely doing the job assigned to her (and is free to quit doing so at any time) is silly. To expound upon that Knuth is arrogant is even funnier. These two individuals are engaged in innocent, free-willed jobs and you come in like the moral chief of police saying the secretary is enslaved and that Knuth is arrogant. This is why I say "get over yourself" and do still mean it.
Regardless, I appreciate your response.
> In my point of view, the main problem is that there are very deep social problems within our setting and most people doesn't even want to see it
Sure, but a secretary doing her job is not one of them.
> They seem to prefer staying in their comfort zones, doing what they do so far as they have learned growing up while going along the flow.
> I think it's much better for people to express what they actually think than to censor them behind big man's words or else communication becomes impossible.
Both true statements. You might have good intentions, but I would think twice before calling something like Knuth arrogant and ask yourself, who's the arrogant one? Who's the one dictating how people should live? Is it Knuth, who is merely living in a way who thinks it'll best optimize his educational findings or is it you, who is judging the situation as if you know what they both want and what's good for them?
