It was worth the 25 euro's my dad spent on them i guess (bday gift it was on sale). just to look at it sometimes and i even read some stuff. but its hard. if you want to learn something for real pick any other book.
Ask HN: Is Knuth's TAOCP worth the time and effort?
121–130 of 141 posts
Re: Ask HN: Is Knuth's TAOCP worth the time and effort?
#122I have TAOCP in my bookshelf. It's actually my second set of books since the first set was stolen from my work-place. I also have other books I haven't read.
Re: Ask HN: Is Knuth's TAOCP worth the time and effort?
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I'm skeptical. I read the first 3 volumes nearly 20 years ago, skipping only a couple of the most laborious mathy sections and don't recall seeing this.
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Re: Ask HN: Is Knuth's TAOCP worth the time and effort?
#124> 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…
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Re: Ask HN: Is Knuth's TAOCP worth the time and effort?
#125> 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…
I highly doubt people making all these lists recommending SICP, Code Complete and the dragon book have read those either.
Re: Ask HN: Is Knuth's TAOCP worth the time and effort?
#126> So for those who are practical programmers and have gone down the Knuth TAOCP rabbit hole There's the rub. TAOCP is Computer Science. "Practical programmers" aren't even engineers. So yes. The books for your intended purpose aren't worth anything. It will have worth when you are writing something 'serious' like compilers, kernels, or complicated games. CRUD apps, nah.
I don't know if it's intended, but I picked up a whiff of condescension from this comment.
I think it's worthy of celebration that the field has come so far that we can have such a thing as "practical programmers" who achieve very significant things in their respective business fields, without having to know much if any theoretical computer science at all.
Slight hyperbole: the CRUD app is basically the indoor sanitation of this century.
This is facilitated by lots of brilliant people who DID read and understand TAoCP (or equivalent), and it's a credit to their brilliance that so many get so much done without reading it.
Re: Ask HN: Is Knuth's TAOCP worth the time and effort?
#127it'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…
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Re: Ask HN: Is Knuth's TAOCP worth the time and effort?
#128The term programming here is used with the same semantic definition as "dynamic programming" or "linear programming". Don't expect the book to touch on how to code fast algorithms, rather expect Knuth to teach you the inner workings of the algorithms regardless of their implementations. Computer science and software development are usually thought to be the same by non computer scientists, but in reality computer sci…
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…
Ha.
My first thought was, there sure are different definitions of what "dynamic programming" is, as I've only seen it as related to the Bellman equation (motivation for the name being that it would sound appealing to Bellman's superiors at RAND who had a distaste for mathematical theory).
But then, solving the damn thing is all about identifying and avoiding re-computing overlapping sub-problems, so I guess that is exactly what you meant (even though I have no idea what "memoization" is) :)
Re: Ask HN: Is Knuth's TAOCP worth the time and effort?
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
I took a class on FW in college, and that definitely helps. Perhaps the book is "hard," but it is hilarious. I can't read a page of it without finding something laugh out loud funny. If that is hard, bring it on. The book really has no beginning or end so feel free to jump around at will. I don't think it is good comparison to taocp.
What did you find laugh out loud funny in Finnegans Wake? (A serious question, I'm not trying to be argumentative.) To me, there were lots of things that were clever or slightly amusing, but nothing near hilarious. Some examples from the first chapter "oystrygods gaggin fishy-gods" - ok, that's clever turning Ostrogoths and Visigoths into seafood gods. The Willingdone Museyroom section was entertaining enough with "W…
As you say, it is difficult to explain humor. The best I can do is try to give examples. And to be honest most of the things that immediately strike me as funny deal with sex.
In the passage cited below by jhedwards, I find the way Joyce suggests Shem's Greek-Jewish heritage explains his taste in cheap prostitutes very funny (as well as his skewering the sanctimoniousness of it all, "you like prostitutes but only the cheap ones"). Also, that he gives the address of the whore house, like it is an advertisement is also funny.
You mention the first chapter, so I started reading from the online link given earlier in the thread. In the second paragraph, I found it funny the way he says that topsawyer (Tom Sawyer?) had not exaggerated the size of his balls when they were "doublin their mumper all the time."
It's all about the wordplay and frankly being ridiculous. Obviously if you read these things in the context of a forum, you are probably not going to find it funny. Context is very important: http://www.cc.com/video-clips/0i0fy2/stand-up-hannibal-bures...
As jhedwards suggests, if you read it aloud you will hear the jokes.
Re: Ask HN: Is Knuth's TAOCP worth the time and effort?
#130pipeline stalls, designing for cache performance, branch prediction, multithreading, etc. Those are issues for a subset of computer hardware. Embedded computing is still huge and has drastically different performance requirements. TAOCP is designed to stand the test of time, not focus on micro-optimizations that generally have limited performance impact and are a waste of time 99% of the time.
> Embedded computing is still huge and has drastically different performance requirements Even chips as small Cortex-M4 has a write buffer, 3-stage pipeline and branch speculation. And real embedded computing is more and more utilizing hardware similar to desktop/mobile/server. You can't run self-driving car / neural networks / image processing on a single threaded CPU with no cache or branch prediction.
Cache is part of TAOCP
As to the rest of it. It's much cheaper to use a GPU style massive array of dumb cores vs. a few faster cores. Don't forget car companies are spending billions on these chips so spending a little more on software to save a lot on hardware is a good tradeoff.