I’ve posted this comment on HN before, but this is my best Knuth story:
In the 70's I had a co-worker, perhaps the best programmer in the department, that had gone to school with Knuth. He told me that one day while in college Knuth was using one of the available key-punch machines to punch his program on cards. My friend was ready to punch his program so he stood nearby to wait for Knuth to finish. Knuth, working on a big program, offered to Keypunch my friends program before finishing his own because my friend's program was shorter and Knuth could keypunch quite fast.
While watching over Knuth's shoulder, my friend noticed Knuth speeding up and slowing down at irregular intervals. Later he asked him about that and Knuth replied that he was fixing the bugs in my friend's Fortran as he punched it out.
In the 70's I had a co-worker, perhaps the best programmer in the department, that had gone to school with Knuth. He told me that one day while in college Knuth was using one of the available key-punch machines to punch his program on cards. My friend was ready to punch his program so he stood nearby to wait for Knuth to finish. Knuth, working on a big program, offered to Keypunch my friends program before finishing his own because my friend's program was shorter and Knuth could keypunch quite fast.
While watching over Knuth's shoulder, my friend noticed Knuth speeding up and slowing down at irregular intervals. Later he asked him about that and Knuth replied that he was fixing the bugs in my friend's Fortran as he punched it out.