Today, you’re a CEO. As any CEO, your allegiance is stretched across three populations plus one aspiration: your investors, your customers, your employees and your vision. How you order this list determines the type of CEO you are. But that’s not the topic of today. No, today, you look at your books and you’re simply not sure. Nothing tangible, you simply get a general sense of inefficiency. For instance, two years ago, your Product & Engineering divisions were 30% cheaper but can you say this business is getting bangs for these bucks?

Donald Ervin Knuth is turning 85 today. He is one of the most fascinating persons in the Computer Science world to me. Let’s indulge as I am telling you my favourite facts about him. Fact #1: One Book, One Life # When he was 24, Don Knuth agreed to write a book about compilers. You know, something straightforward, à la “Compilers in action”: chapter 1 Lexers, chapter 2 Parsers, chapter 3 Generation, etc.

It’s almost 2023 and I am (re)launching my blog.