Touring Stanford

I am addicted to exploring universities as part of my travels. Today, I found myself driving around Campus Loop Drive at Stanford. Finding parking at a university is always a challenge, but I eventually found a parking garage with permit machines that took credit cards. So after dropping the car off, I struck out across campus using my iPhone and the aerial view of the campus as a guide. BIG MISTAKE! Navigating a place like Stanford, which is huge, on foot using just the iPhone map tool is not pleasant. Eventually, I found the heart of the campus, The famous tower:

Supposedly, keeping this tower in view helps keep your bearings. Well that is true if the line of sight is not blocked by building and trees, so it did not work so well. With a little effort, I did find the Stanford Bookstore, another favorite stop on my tours.

Unfortunately, like many university bookstores, the stock of books was pretty weak. It seems that everything is going digital, and bookstores cannot afford to stock more books than needed, so the shelves were pretty bare. I have seen better collections at community college bookstores! Oh, well, I did get to look at all the Stanford running gear, and other clothing work by most students, it seems.

Here is the view from the bookstore across campus

After studying a physical campus map, I managed to find the William Gates Computer Science building, home of Computer Science.

The place was pretty busy with many visitors there for a CS PhD program orientation. It was nice to see so many folks pursuing that degree, and Stanford ranks pretty high in the top CS departments.

I did seek out one faculty office while there, but did not get a chance to say hello to the resident of that office.

Donald Knuth, one of the best Computer Science educators this country has produced is an Emeritus Professor of Computer Science at Stanford, and has a permanent office there.

I have long been a fan of his writings, programs, and concepts, so I really had hoped he might be sitting in his office and I could get a chance to say thanks for what he has contributed to my meager efforts in Computer Science, but, alas, he was not around.

If you claim to be a computer professional, one of the indicators is ownership of Knuth's "The Art of Computer Science". This set of three volumes is a classic in the field, and I have the original set which I acquired while teaching at AFIT back in the early 1980's. I have also been a user of his TeX typesetting software system since about that time as well, and also own volumes Knuth wrote on that software tool set.

One idea Knuth came up with log ago that stuck with me all those years was his notion that software should be written as literature, explaining what is going on to a human reader who must use of maintain that software. Knuth called this concept "Literate Programming", and I ran across his writing on the subject about the time I stopped teaching for the Air Force in 1983. I have been working on a tool of my own that is based on Knuth's ideas and own the pylit.org and co-pylit.org domains to support this research effort. I really want to complete work on this tools set soon, since i believe it has merit and would be of use to the programming community. I would have loved to have had a chance to chat about that with Knuth, but that did not happen today. Oh well, maybe later I can pull that off. I will add it to my bucket list.

Stanford is a school I would have loved to have attended. I often wonder how I would have done at a "harder" school, and I still have dreams of getting that PhD finished sometime. Maybe it will happen. You should never stop dreaming, even in the face of extreme hardships!