Last month, Knuth was playing with an Othello program written in CWEB [1].

    for (k=0;k<8;k++)
      @<If direction |k| allows a move, |return 1|; otherwise |continue|@>;
    return 0;

[1] https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/programs/othello....

What's with those Chinese names (see both https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/faq.html#asian and https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/vita.pdf)? Why did they become part of his identity?

Knuth is so famous that Google translates his Chinese name as "Knuth" rather than a literal translation.

I like the fact that he doesn’t use email anymore. If I got to his level the first thing I’d do would be to hire an assistant to deal with all phone calls, emails and letters

My hero! I would never have stayed in “computer things” had I not read Donald’s volumes.