I can barely find time to read 3-4 pages of a novel before I pass out before bed. I look at volumes like this, Churchill's The Second World War, Summa Theologica, and wonder if I could ever get through these things in my lifetime.
Knuth's Art of Computer Programming, V 4B, has gone into print
21–30 of 357 posts
Re: Knuth's Art of Computer Programming, V 4B, has gone into print
#22Can someone honestly tell me if they have actually read these books AND found them useful ON TGE JOB? What do you guys do for work? I tried reading part 1?? Like ten years ago and it was pretty much assembly language or something I believe. And gave up since it wasnt something that I needed in academia back then and there were far better ways to learn DSA
I've been randomly skipping around inside these books for a long, long time. They're full of little gems that you won't find elsewhere.
For example, in Volume 4A there's a simple technique for comparing two pointers in bit-reversed form. This technique was patented by Hewlett-Packard as a method of randomizing search trees (treaps):
https://bugfix-66.com/fdb8bb4fa84cf810aa25ff40c88a13c1874410...
From Volume 3, here is by far the fastest method of sorting integers (Singleton's method), an algorithm I have used professionally several times (e.g., for beam search in a speech decoder):
https://bugfix-66.com/834f0677c85b23c0bf1047d3654ab7c27ff054...
Knuth's books are just packed with gems like that.
The meticulous high quality of the books is also remarkable. However, if you look very carefully you can find rare mistakes. I received payment from Knuth and have an account at his bank:
https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/boss.html
Getting your name on the above list was once a Hacker rite of passage.
Re: Knuth's Art of Computer Programming, V 4B, has gone into print
#23Can someone honestly tell me if they have actually read these books AND found them useful ON TGE JOB? What do you guys do for work? I tried reading part 1?? Like ten years ago and it was pretty much assembly language or something I believe. And gave up since it wasnt something that I needed in academia back then and there were far better ways to learn DSA
I used them to implement an arbitrary precision math library for an embedded processor that needed to do some precise calculation in an autonomous environment. The embedded processor had no floating point capabilities. The book showed me the method of how to do it efficiently in a manner that could be adapted to the 16 bit architecture I was working with. It also showed me how to detect and handle overflow situations…
It may not be a coincidence that one of the author's other books is on Biblical studies: https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/316.html
I didn't realize it had been blurbed by a professor emeritus at a seminary (as well as Martin Gardner).
Re: Knuth's Art of Computer Programming, V 4B, has gone into print
#24This is one of those book series that I really, really want to purchase as a beautiful, matching, leather-bound set. And, yes, I would read it for pleasure, and I would treasure it.
I was thinking the same thing when I clicked on the comments. I somewhat expect this will be the last volume in the series, so one could now hope to buy a "complete" set. I would love to revisit and explore all of the material using modern programming languages.
Re: Knuth's Art of Computer Programming, V 4B, has gone into print
#2550 years ago, he claimed he was going to write 10 volumes of TAOCP. The actuarial tables are not encouraging here.
He doesn't respond to emails, but his assistant does, and I sent a copy of my book about Xerox to his home address. No answer. But hey, it was worth a shot.
Re: Knuth's Art of Computer Programming, V 4B, has gone into print
#26I can barely find time to read 3-4 pages of a novel before I pass out before bed. I look at volumes like this, Churchill's The Second World War, Summa Theologica, and wonder if I could ever get through these things in my lifetime.
Churchill's Second World War books are an incredibly easy read for how information dense they are, as is his "History Of the English Speaking People."
Re: Knuth's Art of Computer Programming, V 4B, has gone into print
#27In Google’s recent “Hacking Google” series [1] they appeared to credit Knuth via his bug reward program in his books [2] as having created the first software bug bounty offer.
Anyone aware of any software bug bounties that predate Knuth’s?
___________
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33066313
- specifically: https://youtube.com/watch?v=IoXiXlCNoXg&list=PL590L5WQmH8dsx...
Re: Knuth's Art of Computer Programming, V 4B, has gone into print
#28Just picked up a near pristine vol.1 first edition in a uni library selloff. Wonder how they got a copy so unread after all these years.
Re: Knuth's Art of Computer Programming, V 4B, has gone into print
#29Can someone honestly tell me if they have actually read these books AND found them useful ON TGE JOB? What do you guys do for work? I tried reading part 1?? Like ten years ago and it was pretty much assembly language or something I believe. And gave up since it wasnt something that I needed in academia back then and there were far better ways to learn DSA
I once used them at work. I had a monitor that was too low, so putting a volume or two of Knuth under it raised it to the right height. That's the only time I've ever used them though.
Quite expensive for that use.
Re: Knuth's Art of Computer Programming, V 4B, has gone into print
#30I was hoping that Fascicle 7 would come out, as that would be on Constraint Programming, and I think that's very similar to SAT-solvers (Fascicle 6) and the BDDs that he's already covered.
Then again: SAT-solvers are a big enough subject matter on their own that backtracking search + SAT-solvers is more than enough to fill a volume of its own. So choosing these two subjects as volume 4B makes sense.
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As a fan of constraint programming, I'd love to see Knuth's take on the subject. I hope he doesn't skip over Fasicle 7.