To me the question doesn't depend so much on whether Knuth was "framed".
The meaningful criticism leveled at Knuth's code was that it was monolithic. It's true that it was long because he wrote it from scratch, but that's not enough to force you to be tightly coupled.
Did Knuth try to make his code reusable? Was it reusable? I think those are the key questions.
The meaningful criticism leveled at Knuth's code was that it was monolithic. It's true that it was long because he wrote it from scratch, but that's not enough to force you to be tightly coupled.
Did Knuth try to make his code reusable? Was it reusable? I think those are the key questions.