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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?

#31

Post by ot »

Analemma_ wrote: post #7

> based on its stellar reputation as one of the indispensible, foundational computer science books that every programmer should read. A while back, I was joking with some friends that TAoCP is to the programming world what Finnegans Wake is to English literature: you're not supposed to read it, nobody's ever actually read it. We all just say we've read it, talk about how brilliant it is, and place it prominently on o…

> "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.

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

#32

Post by davidw »

rubiquity wrote: post #29
davidw wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

The fundamentals of computation remain the same.

Certainly, I realize he's not writing about the cool new library for Python or something, but even just looking at actual computer science stuff, the field is expanding rapidly.

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

#35

Post by brudgers »

The older editions of "Sorting and Searching" contained a lot of information on efficiently reading and writing to sequential storage devices [tape]. Don't know about the current edition. [1] That said, "Combinatorial Algorithms" is all about efficiency that is relevant today. Combinatorial problems are the sort of thing where good algorithms stomp caching, branch prediction etc. because the fundamental problems are in NP and NP/32 is still NP.

Knuth has spent 50 years creating computer science that we can take for granted. But in the end TAoCP is a "little book on compilers" and if that's not relevant to one's vocation and the topic isn't intellectually interesting in and of itself then it's probably not the right book for a person.

Knuth always reminds me how hard this stuff really is.

Good luck.

[1]: edit. The First Edition has a centerfold showing the sequences of different society's executions across multiple tape drives.

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

#36

Post by pmelendez »

apetresc wrote: post #25

It's not useful as a reference, but it is full of delight – though only if you actually do the problems. Many of them are chains of inquiry that build on each other and culminate in some result that gives you so much intuition about whatever it was they were dealing with. If you're in the Toronto region, I actually run a reading group for these books: http://www.meetup.com/Knuth-Reading-Group-Art-of-Computer-Pr... .…

> It's not useful as a reference,

I would argue the opposite... When I needed to read about the different approaches on how to shuffle a deck for a card game TAOCP was there for me. When I needed to investigate different approaches for string comparison algorithms, TAOCP was there for me. When I didn't understand what was the deal and why was so hard to implement a random number generator, TAOCP was there too.

Anytime that I needed a reference for a core CS algorithm or data structure, TAOCP worked very well as a reference for me. It feels like the Britannica Encyclopedia for CS.

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

#38

Post by kens »

pklausler wrote: post #23
Analemma_ wrote: post #7

> based on its stellar reputation as one of the indispensible, foundational computer science books that every programmer should read. A while back, I was joking with some friends that TAoCP is to the programming world what Finnegans Wake is to English literature: you're not supposed to read it, nobody's ever actually read it. We all just say we've read it, talk about how brilliant it is, and place it prominently on o…

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 infinite time, but very little that I've found practical to me. I've read enough of TAOCP to get two Knuth reward checks but can't motivate myself to read more than a fraction of it.

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

#39

Post by poulsbohemian »

A good portion of my undergrad CS program used excerpts from TAOCP. So yeah - there's good stuff in there, but maybe it wasn't what you personally wanted. If you've been in industry for a long time, then sure - you've probably developed expertise in areas that TAOCP doesn't cover. But if you are looking for a rigorous, broad, academic base then it is pretty solid.

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

#40

Post by pmelendez »

davidw wrote: post #32
rubiquity wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fundamentals of computation remain the same.

Certainly, I realize he's not writing about the cool new library for Python or something, but even just looking at actual computer science stuff, the field is expanding rapidly.

> "but even just looking at actual computer science stuff, the field is expanding rapidly."

Is it though?

Hash tables - 1953, Red-Black trees 1972, Quicksort 1959, etc...

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