[syncsynchalt]

The note is actually from Chuck Baker, the editor of that issue of Datamation.

You're not alone in assuming DEK wrote the note, a lot of people seem to attribute it to Knuth.

[svat]

I see. I was talking about not the article itself, but this handwritten note on the front page:

> This article from Datamation is by someone from ADR - the name might be Moore. (It wasn't meant to be anonymous; that was accidental). A lot of people who knew me thought I wrote it. I wish I had!

> I particularly like his definition of a bad programmer. (My personal record is about 12 years.)

The scan comes from Knuth's personal collection scanned by the Computer History Museum. Many of the documents have similar notes by Knuth, so I assumed this was by him too. Though on closer look, I'm not so sure the handwriting is the same. (It would be ironic if a note about misattribution gets misattributed.) How do you know the note is by Chuck Baker?

[svat]

Answering the question: the handwritten note is indeed by Chuck Baker (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12569853) — matches the handwriting at https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/Knuth_Don...

It's interesting that the editor didn't know the author of one of the articles in their magazine!

[grener75]

It was probably written by William H. Moore of ADR.