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Probably more of a status symbol for most people. How many of you actually read these books carefully?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How many people need this level of depth?
A lot more than you would think - there are plenty of programmers out there that can't tell you the tradeoffs between the different approaches, and they can get away with it, because it appears to work (see thread synchronization, cross-site scripting, data-base injection, null pointers, pointer overflow, etc, etc) until somebody demonstrates that it doesn't.
Does TAOCP cover any of those?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've read parts of vol. 2, especially about random number generation. I found it in a library book sale for a quarter. THAT made my day. :) I've found a suspiciously high percentage of the people who have totally! read the Art of Computer Programming are unable to answer even basic questions about MIX, by the way.
That's pretty reasonable with MIX, given that it's a terrible language that was obsolete before it was invented and that all the algorithms are described in English as well.
Can somebody elaborate on the use cases of such a set? Are these volumes more theoretical and academic or practical? Is ownership more of a symbol or are they genuinely interesting to read, given a cramped startup lifestyle? What level of formal comp sci education does the author assume? Not skepticism, just genuine curiosity and intrigue. I don't have a formal CS background, so forgive me for the naiveté if this is…
This will likely not help you build your startup unless you need a really strong understanding of Programming concepts. In the words of the wise Wikipedia: "The famous offer of a reward check worth "one hexadecimal dollar" (100HEX base 16 cents, in decimal, is $2.56) for any errors found, and the correction of these errors in subsequent printings, has contributed to the highly polished and still-authoritative nature…
Can somebody elaborate on the use cases of such a set? Are these volumes more theoretical and academic or practical? Is ownership more of a symbol or are they genuinely interesting to read, given a cramped startup lifestyle? What level of formal comp sci education does the author assume? Not skepticism, just genuine curiosity and intrigue. I don't have a formal CS background, so forgive me for the naiveté if this is…
It's all three: theoretical, academic and practical :-) Actually everything is pretty much build up from very basic knowledge. But beware that it has a high information density and that it is for the mathematically inclined. To digest in small portions :-)
Probably more of a status symbol for most people. How many of you actually read these books carefully?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A rather superficial status symbol, I'd say: owning a book does not equate to knowing or understanding its contents. I purchased my copies individually (back when I was a student and I could ill afford them) and, ignoring Knuth's suggesting algorithm for reading the series, read the "interesting" sections quite carefully. I still use them for reference and occasionally find time to re-read parts of it.
Pretty ineffective status symbol, too. How many people whom you might want to impress are going to see exactly what's on your bookshelves, and know enough to recognize Knuth as impressive? I'll hazard a guess that most people for whom those are true also know enough to be more influenced by other more meaningful things than what books you happen to have on your shelves. (I bet some people do buy Knuth as a sort of st…
Can somebody elaborate on the use cases of such a set? Are these volumes more theoretical and academic or practical? Is ownership more of a symbol or are they genuinely interesting to read, given a cramped startup lifestyle? What level of formal comp sci education does the author assume? Not skepticism, just genuine curiosity and intrigue. I don't have a formal CS background, so forgive me for the naiveté if this is…
I often hear TAOCP described as the series of programming books "that every programmer should read." I think this is simply untrue ... TAOCP was not written to be read from cover to cover ... It's very dense and academic, and the examples are all in assembly language.
(From http://www.billthelizard.com/2008/12/books-programmers-dont-...)
Probably more of a status symbol for most people. How many of you actually read these books carefully?
I've read parts of vol. 2, especially about random number generation. I found it in a library book sale for a quarter. THAT made my day. :) I've found a suspiciously high percentage of the people who have totally! read the Art of Computer Programming are unable to answer even basic questions about MIX, by the way.
Reading can just mean reading word by word, symbol by symbol then putting the book on the shelf. That ends up happening a lot with material that has a lot of formulas and theorems. It could take days for some to understand just a couple of pages.
So basically I not surprised at all that you've met so many people who've read the volumes, but didn't all the subtleties.
I think reading the volumes is the next step in status show-off step after buying and putting them on the shelf.
Also, as many have pointed that MIX is just too obscure. Not knowing much about doesn't really indicate a lack of theoretical knowledge. I would personally skipped over those chapters.
So is this just the beginning of part 4?