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Ask HN: Is Knuth's TAOCP worth the time and effort?

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Re: Ask HN: Is Knuth's TAOCP worth the time and effort?

#91

Post by kazinator »

tonocm wrote: post #60
kazinator wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Umm, no. "Programming" in "TAOCP" actually refers to "making step by step recipes for a computer" to execute (and is prefixed by the word "Computer" to make this clear). In "linear programming" it refers to something completely different, namely the planning of the use of resources or optimization. "Dynamic programming" is yet something else: a narrow cluster of techniques having to do with memoization in order to he…

Umm, no. You got half the concept right. Programming, especially in the 70s refers to a set of instructions to be followed in order to achieve a specific task. When you prefix it with "computer" you're specifying the domain, namely all instructions that will allow a computer to do something. Like you correctly mentioned, when prefixed with "dynamic" you're specifying the set of instructions that have a common approac…

"The term "linear programming" for certain optimization cases was due to George B. Dantzig, although much of the theory had been introduced by Leonid Kantorovich in 1939. (Programming in this context does not refer to computer programming, but from the use of program by the United States military to refer to proposed training and logistics schedules, which were the problems Dantzig studied at that time.)"

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_optimization#Hist...

Re: Ask HN: Is Knuth's TAOCP worth the time and effort?

#92

Post by vram22 »

davidw wrote: post #27
taeric wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this shows a huge folly in our industry. Short answer, is the book easy? Of course not. Is it dated in approach? Yes. Sorta. What would make it better? A modern language? Why? Consider, just yesterday there was someone designing an elevator system using python. That is literally one of the first examples in TAoCP. Not long ago, there was an article about how linear search with sentinel values is actually faster t…

> But, there is a lot to offer in the industry of programming. Knuth picked an order to offer this information and is going in that order. Perhaps it's sacrilege, but I've always considered it kind of weird to take on a project like TAOCP in a field that's growing far faster than it can be documented by one person.

Guts.

Also (you probably know): "The unreasonable man ..." - Shaw (GBS)

https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_Bernard_Shaw

Re: Ask HN: Is Knuth's TAOCP worth the time and effort?

#93

Post by davidw »

zzalpha wrote: post #70
davidw wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at Knuth's future book plans, and consider all the things he's not putting in them that are current. He's also revisited the books some, and plans to do so again in the future. I don't mean to take away from the books - they're beautiful and full of a lot of timeless knowledge. There's just something that seems a bit ... I can't even find a word for it ... about the endeavor.

I believe the word you're looking for is sisyphean, and I actually don't agree. You've yet to make the case that the fundamentals of computing science are changing so much that documenting them is not a worthy task. Again, basic algorithms and data structures simply have not changed. Their performance characteristics, methods for optimal implementation, etc, certainly have as computer architectures have evolved (thin…

> documenting them is not a worthy task.

Woah there! No one ever said anything about 'not worthy'. I have tremendous admiration and respect for Knuth and his work, and like you say, a lot what he's written is timeless.

Re: Ask HN: Is Knuth's TAOCP worth the time and effort?

#94

Post by QuadrupleA »

Appreciate all the feedback and discussion, been sneaking peeks at the comments throughout the day - I'm still within the time window to return the boxed set thankfully, and haven't spilled coffee on them yet, so I'll probably go that route. Some of the other resources people have suggested sound like they'd be a better use of my study time.

Re: Ask HN: Is Knuth's TAOCP worth the time and effort?

#95

Post by snowwrestler »

snowwrestler wrote: post #58
ot wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "It's a pleasure to meet you, Professor Knuth," Steve [Jobs] said. "I've read all of your books." > "You're full of shit," Knuth responded. ( http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Close_Encounters_... ) Yes, now we know that this never happened, but I like to think it did.

He could respond that way to everyone. In every full set of TAOCP, there is a sentence that reads "If you have read this far, mail this string to the author to collect $25." The sentence is followed by a 10 character alphanumeric string. The string and placement of this sentence is randomized: different in every set. To this day only 3 people have collected their checks. All three have them framed on their walls.

Too late to edit, so I'll reply to myself:

My parent post was a (badly executed) joke, riffing on a) the famous bug reward checks and b) the running joke (mentioned in other comments) that a lot more people own TAOCP than have actually read it. EDIT: and c) the urban legends of students putting such a "test" sentence in papers they hand in to inattentive professors.

There is no better way to kill a joke than explain it, but mine was DOA anyway...

Re: Ask HN: Is Knuth's TAOCP worth the time and effort?

#96

Post by mthorbal »

Many years ago, I purchased TA0CP because I was stuck. I simply could not get a tiny 8-bit microcontroller to linearly search a lengthy data array in real time. I found the solution in the preface of the work! Simply put the value that you are looking for at the end. That way, you can eliminate checking for the end of the array in the search loop. So, at least for me, I got mymoney's worth after a couple of pages.

Re: Ask HN: Is Knuth's TAOCP worth the time and effort?

#97

Post by brudgers »

davidw wrote: post #27
taeric wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this shows a huge folly in our industry. Short answer, is the book easy? Of course not. Is it dated in approach? Yes. Sorta. What would make it better? A modern language? Why? Consider, just yesterday there was someone designing an elevator system using python. That is literally one of the first examples in TAoCP. Not long ago, there was an article about how linear search with sentinel values is actually faster t…

> But, there is a lot to offer in the industry of programming. Knuth picked an order to offer this information and is going in that order. Perhaps it's sacrilege, but I've always considered it kind of weird to take on a project like TAOCP in a field that's growing far faster than it can be documented by one person.

My suspicion is that the growth rate of computer science is partially due to Knuth's work. TAoCP has a fair amount of original research in it and Knuth developed tools like the Stanford Graph Base, original algorithms, and original numerical methods as part of his research for the book...and TeX and Metafont for it's publication.

Re: Ask HN: Is Knuth's TAOCP worth the time and effort?

#98

Post by kjs3 »

pajop wrote: post #89

it's worth reading just for one of the best book in-jokes ever - see the introductory part "Notes on the Exercises" of Volume 2 "Seminumerical Algorithms" 3. [M50] Prove that when n is an integer, n > 2, the equation xn + yn = zn has no solution in positive integers x, y, z. Knuth's book was published in 1973. The initial solution to this exercise was solved by a then Princeton professor in 1993 and was finalized by…

It's kinda important to note here that the "M50" designation indicates that the excercise is an "unsolved research problem". It's not an in-joke; Knuth is presenting unsolved problems with the intention that the student would consider trying solving them.

Re: Ask HN: Is Knuth's TAOCP worth the time and effort?

#99

Post by petegrif »

kens wrote: post #38
pklausler wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In truth, if you haven't actually read Finnegans Wake, you've missed a grand literary experience.

I've read Finnegans Wake and view it as almost entirely a waste of time. Maybe that marks me a philistine, but I put a whole lot of effort into the book - reading books about it, listening to two different versions on tape - and it did pretty much nothing for me. And to the original question, I consider TAOCP probably not worth the time and effort to read in detail. It has a lot of interesting stuff if you have infin…

You're right. It's gibberish.

Re: Ask HN: Is Knuth's TAOCP worth the time and effort?

#100

Post by tdsamardzhiev »

SFjulie1 wrote: post #49

Do you need to people to tell you what to do? Asking other's advice is as stupid as judging a book by its cover. If you have studied a tad, or read books in the past, there are ways to efficiently evaluate a book: Read some pages randomly. Think 30s if you liked it. TAOCP is indigest for sure. Then take a topic for which its relevant. Read it. Did you learnt something? A) no, either you or him is an idiot. Go to B) B…

Funny how you tell him he doesn't need other people to tell him what to do, and then you tell him what to do :)
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