The Duties of John von Neumann’s Assistant in the 1930s (2020)

The fact that von Neumann, a polyglot fluent in English, kept writing in German while at Princeton and left translation to his assistants, makes me wonder how much productivity is lost to Europe not having a lingua franca native to all citizens. Personally English isn't my native language. I write English with greater fluency than my native language at this point, but reaching this level took thousands of hours that could have been spent solving problems and building things.

This post seems to be missing the punchline that Von Neumann is alleged to later have hired 4 assistants for those tasks.

I’ve never understood what’s the point of giving a lecture nobody except you can grasp. IMHO, It could be justified only by the novelty of topic discussed, otherwise it’s just a waste of everybody’s time.

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I hate medium and the gateway to content. “Install the app or login with social profile to view on the web”. No thank you.

This entry seems puzzling that our printers were behind the Germans in that era:<p>As American printers were not yet accustomed with the practice of typesetting mathematical symbols, they needed to be taught.