Very cool. I own the originals and the 4th but sadly I have to admit that even though I am a reasonably accomplished developer with a couple of CS degrees I have a hard time understanding this work and have not yet really read it. I feel like I am publicly admitting failure just posting this. I still have time to make sure these are not just bookshelf decorations though.
Knuth's Art of Computer Programming, V 4B, has gone into print
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Re: Knuth's Art of Computer Programming, V 4B, has gone into print
#72Very cool. I own the originals and the 4th but sadly I have to admit that even though I am a reasonably accomplished developer with a couple of CS degrees I have a hard time understanding this work and have not yet really read it. I feel like I am publicly admitting failure just posting this. I still have time to make sure these are not just bookshelf decorations though.
Re: Knuth's Art of Computer Programming, V 4B, has gone into print
#73Can 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
It just means you're not doing anything interesting on your job. If you have constraints, i.e. not enough compute, not enough memory, not enough storage, then you'll need a solution and, odds are, somebody has had the same problem before and it's been written up already in Knuth's TAOCP. Of course, the problem won't be exactly in the form it's been written up, but you have to have enough experience and knowledge to k…
Re: Knuth's Art of Computer Programming, V 4B, has gone into print
#74Can 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 have so far found 1-2 references that I could otherwise not decode, plus wanted to know about n-way sorting.
And that's how I would recommend to use it. I have it on my shelf to pull it out if I have to. Which is rare but it does happen. And as such it proved value to me, on the job, as I know how to get into these things as needed. But it has a similar insane price to usefulness ratio as an encyclopedia.
What I've done so far? Everything from Sysadmin to DevOps to Engineer (data heavy) to SRE to Data Engineer.
If you want to learn DSA then you should probably start with something that goes less deep, is less complete but covers useful algorithms from many areas.
Re: Knuth's Art of Computer Programming, V 4B, has gone into print
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
And yet significantly cheaper than Apple's Pro Stand.
And more prestigious to boot.
This way my computing is based on a strong foundation...
Re: Knuth's Art of Computer Programming, V 4B, has gone into print
#76Can 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…
Glad to know that the problem isn't totally me :)
Re: Knuth's Art of Computer Programming, V 4B, has gone into print
#77This 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.
Bookbinding is a great hobby. Or you can commission someone to create leather-bound covers for your book?
Re: Knuth's Art of Computer Programming, V 4B, has gone into print
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
Interesting! A small correction: "innumerate" means "incapable of doing arithmetic"; perhaps you meant "innumerable", which means "incapable of being counted". Also you have "wuthor" for "author", "bible" for "Bible", "donÄt" for "don’t", "WHat" for "What", and "theologician" for "theologian".
I lolled at theologician
Re: Knuth's Art of Computer Programming, V 4B, has gone into print
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
Each volume is taking longer and longer (4A and 4B and work on 4C have taken over 20 years). Mr Knuth is 84 and if there are 3 more volumes...
Maybe Brandon Sanderson can write the last three books.
I'd love it if someone like Chris Wellons or Per Bothner could work on them, but filling Knuth's shoes may be a big task for one man.
Re: Knuth's Art of Computer Programming, V 4B, has gone into print
#80Can 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
A colleague of mine had invented a technique for factoring composite numbers, that he thought would be quite fast. I thought a little about it and saw that it would degenerate into sat solving. I checked taocp and indeed my colleague's idea was in there. Also a faster algorithm was presented in the relevant section. I lended the book to him and we saved around a month of work.