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Art of Computer Programming, Volumes 1-4A Boxed Set

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Re: Art of Computer Programming, Volumes 1-4A Boxed Set

#51

Post by joe_bleau »

silentbicycle wrote: post #13
amichail wrote: post #2

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.

Volume 2 is my favorite as well. I think that was the first time I'd been exposed to Benford's Law (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benfords_law).

Re: Art of Computer Programming, Volumes 1-4A Boxed Set

#52

Post by Groxx »

okmjuhb wrote: post #35
Groxx wrote: post #33

Anyone know if these are all updated to the RISC system, or is that still in progress?

That's still in progress (and, given that Knuth is more than seventy years old and still has at least 3 books to go before he will begin to revise them, odds are such a revised set will never be released).

That's kinda what I was anticipating. But a guy can hope, right?

Re: Art of Computer Programming, Volumes 1-4A Boxed Set

#53

Post by silentbicycle »

rdtsc wrote: post #49
silentbicycle wrote: post #13

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 because there is a big difference between reading and understanding. 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 d…

I was more thinking along the lines of, "Oh yeah, I've read them all. Wait, MIX? What's that?"

I've seen several equally dense, informative CS books (such as Dick Grune's _Parsing Techniques: A Practical Guide_), but Knuth has a specific sort of cachet among xkcd-quoting geek hipsters, so people namedropping him, make a pretense of having read them all the way through, etc.

Re: Art of Computer Programming, Volumes 1-4A Boxed Set

#54

Post by silentbicycle »

Locke1689 wrote: post #45
tlammens wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :-)

All code is also in a unimplemented instruction set architecture, so having a familiarity with some assembler is recommended.

There seem to be implementations, such as http://www.gnu.org/software/mdk/manual/mdk.html . One person's "unimplemented instruction set architecture" is another's "virtual machine".

Re: Art of Computer Programming, Volumes 1-4A Boxed Set

#55

Post by [deleted] »

glhaynes wrote: post #42
tomjen3 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

thread synchronization, cross-site scripting, data-base injection, null pointers, pointer overflow Does TAOCP cover any of those?

[deleted]

Re: Art of Computer Programming, Volumes 1-4A Boxed Set

#56

Post by tjr »

Groxx wrote: post #52
okmjuhb wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's still in progress (and, given that Knuth is more than seventy years old and still has at least 3 books to go before he will begin to revise them, odds are such a revised set will never be released).

That's kinda what I was anticipating. But a guy can hope, right?

Knuth still seems hopeful, so we might as well join him.

Re: Art of Computer Programming, Volumes 1-4A Boxed Set

#57

Post by kjhgfgbhnj »

pinhead wrote: post #27
kjhgfgbhnj wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure and what do you get for the price of an iPod? The life's work of the greatest genius in CS and a set of knowledge that will last you more than your lifetime.

Hey, I am not disputing that the content isn't worth while. I just would rather have it in paperback (which is already out, I believe) so it's cheaper and easier to flip through. But I guess that is just my personal preference.

I have a paperback edition printed on almost tissue paper I bought in India 10 years ago for about $5

Re: Art of Computer Programming, Volumes 1-4A Boxed Set

#58

Post by Locke1689 »

silentbicycle wrote: post #54
Locke1689 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All code is also in a unimplemented instruction set architecture, so having a familiarity with some assembler is recommended.

There seem to be implementations, such as http://www.gnu.org/software/mdk/manual/mdk.html . One person's "unimplemented instruction set architecture" is another's "virtual machine".

I was referring to hardware implementations, but cool nonetheless!

Re: Art of Computer Programming, Volumes 1-4A Boxed Set

#59

Post by tomjen3 »

glhaynes wrote: post #42
tomjen3 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

thread synchronization, cross-site scripting, data-base injection, null pointers, pointer overflow Does TAOCP cover any of those?

I would expect it to have plenty of algorithms to implement mutexes with, as well as parallel sort algorithms.

There are also going to be a lot of pointer based tricks that you don't get unless you really understand pointers.

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