高德纳(Donald Knuth) 给年轻人的建议

The video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75Ju0eM5T2c

http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMzQzMDE0NTgw.html

1. Disbelieve that something is trending, that is good. I probably go the other stream work if i find too many people adapting to a certain idea, cause I think it is probably wrong. If  my work has become popular, I probably think I should change. This looks ridiculous. I see the other side, that too often too many people would do something against their interests, just because the community wants them do in that way. Because they think doing the popular work will bring more prestige. However, if you go with what you really think is important, a higher chance that it is really important in a long run, which is most benefit to the world. So follow yourself is better than follow the heard.

不要相信热门的东西就是好东西. 我更愿意选择另一条路假如许多人趋附于某一个想法，因为我觉得这个想法很可能是错的。 假如我的作品一下子火了，我很可能认为我需要改变了。这听起来很荒唐。 但是我已经看到了这事情的另一面，很多人常常违背自己的兴趣追逐于某件事情，仅仅是因为这件事情是社会或者很多人都追捧它。而这些违背自己兴趣去寻求热门方向的人，会觉得这样子能给他们带来更多的名利，所以才去追求那些热门的技术或事情. 但是，假如你坚持你的想法是重要的，那么从长远的看，这很有可能就是对的，而且会是真正有益于世界的. 追随你自己的选择，而不是追逐你道听途说的。

2. My friend Peter told me, I'm a computer programming, I should write the whole theory in a station, I should write a reader stage before the content. It might work for him pretty much, but I work in a complete different way, I have to see something to my way surrounding it, totally understood it before I can write about it without any confidence. That's the way I do it. So before I write up high-level thing, I will fully understand all the low-level thing. Other people have complete different stream, but i know.. I wrote a book, a few words of a bible, which you can find it in the library. I have firm picks which I can hang another . But if I go through my life without any index knowledge, I get flincy . The liberty of education is to learn something about everything, and everything about something. I like the idea learning everything about something. If you don't know something is very solid, you would not have confidence. Many times, I just read through a lot of material just to write one sense. Because my sense would learn tuition words that make it more convincing. if we don't have knowledge, somehow, it comes out explicitly in my writing.

为了写一样东西， 我会弄清楚几乎所有关于这个东西的事情， 这就是我做事的方式，所以在我写一些high-level的东西时， 我会把所有low-level的事情搞清楚。当然其他人有他们自己的风格。你必须广泛地阅读，像我写我的“圣经”的时候那样，对一个主题会去阅读许多书，这样写出来的东西才具有索引的能力，否则会很浮夸。 学习有两种，一种是学习某些关于所有的知识，另一种是学习所有关于某事的知识。 我赞同后者， 因为假如你没有对某事有特别牢固的掌握的话，你就不会拥有自信。 有很多次，我为了写一点自己的直觉而看了很多书。因为这么做会使你的直觉更形象，更令人信服。假如你没有这方面的知识的话，你很难在你的文章里将你的感觉清晰地写出来.