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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

#131

Post by svat »

Note that, to get an idea of the contents, you can see the previously published fascicles, and earlier drafts online (pre-fascicles):

• Mathematical Preliminaries Redux: https://cs.stanford.edu/~knuth/fasc5a.ps.gz

• 7.2.2 Introduction to Backtracking: https://cs.stanford.edu/~knuth/fasc5b.ps.gz

• 7.2.2.1 Dancing Links: https://cs.stanford.edu/~knuth/fasc5c.ps.gz

• 7.2.2.2 Satisfiability: https://cs.stanford.edu/~knuth/fasc6a.ps.gz

The first three were published together as "Volume 4, Fascicle 5" in 2019, and the last one—Satisfiability—was published as "Volume 4, Fascicle 6" in 2015. Of course the actual publication as Volume 4B has hundreds of fixes and additions beyond what was published earlier, and a lovely preface that you can read here: https://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=3143614

> You might think that a 700-page book has probably been padded with peripheral material. But I constantly had to "cut, cut, cut" while writing it, because […] new and potentially interesting-yet-unexplored topics kept popping up, more than enough to fill a lifetime; yet I knew that I must move on. […] I wrote nearly a thousand computer programs while preparing this material, because I find that I don't understand things unless I try to program them.

Re: Knuth's Art of Computer Programming, V 4B, has gone into print

#132

Post by lupire »

Q6T46nT668w6i3m wrote: post #99
rietta wrote: post #69

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.

If you’re interested in reading them (and they are extremely readable), you should first know something (not everything) about programming and discrete mathematics. If you watched some YouTube videos on logic, sets, graphs, etc. you’ll be more than equipped. Knuth has even written a book, Concrete Mathematics, that covers these pre-requisites but it might be faster and easier to watch a Khan Academy video!

That's not really what Concrete Mathematics is about. It's not a prereq to TAOCP.

Re: Knuth's Art of Computer Programming, V 4B, has gone into print

#133

Post by lupire »

ChicagoBoy11 wrote: post #114
rietta wrote: post #69

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.

I've felt exactly like this about NKS. I have tried many times to understand it, but I come up empty. Half the time I think "well, maybe IT IS just nonsense?" and half the time I think I'm probably just not mentally sharp enough to get it. But I try every couple years or so, but the activity has yielded little more than being a paperweight in my house and a quiet exercise in looking at pretty pictures for me.

NKS isn't a new kind of science, but it's not nonsense. It's a poorly cited thorough monograph on cellular automata.

Re: Knuth's Art of Computer Programming, V 4B, has gone into print

#134

Post by kragen »

openfuture wrote: post #92
kragen wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TAOCP is not job training now, if it ever was; that is trying to get the cart to pull the horse. The point of a job, unless you're lucky enough to get a job where you can change the world, is to pay your living expenses so that you have the leisure to do things like read TAOCP and write Sudoku solvers. If that's not your idea of an enjoyable vacation, don't read it; you'll regret it.

The world changes through the collective effort of the people who inhabit it. Not because some demigod wrote a script.

Mostly the world changes due to unpredictable emergent phenomena, but occasionally you do get intentional changes as well. But intention is individual, not collective; there's no such thing as collective intention. At best you have many people's intentions in agreement. Rarely does that arise in a workplace.

Re: Knuth's Art of Computer Programming, V 4B, has gone into print

#135

Post by lupire »

moron4hire wrote: post #127
rietta wrote: post #69

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.

Honestly, despite everyone's claims of how "beautiful" the books are, I think they are rather terribly formatted. For example, the first volume consists of 2 "chapters". Each chapter spans about 250 pages on its own. So actually not a chapter, but a section, or maybe even a book in its own right. Then, each chapter is broken into sections and subsections that flow one into the next. There's a fundamental lack of whit…

You read a math book slowly, so you don't need whitespace for help skimming. Extra whitespace would make the huge books even huger.

Beautiful formatting here refers to the text, not the whitespace.

Re: Knuth's Art of Computer Programming, V 4B, has gone into print

#137

Post by WillAdams »

krylon wrote: post #109
rietta wrote: post #69

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.

I vaguely recall an anecdote being told here on HN where Donald Knuth met Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs said something along the lines of "I admire you very much, I have read all of your books!", to which Donald Knuth replied something to the effect of "I don't think so." (more politely, though, I presume). Which is to say I don't think many people have actually worked their way all through them. Neither have I, there's no…

The story is related at:

https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&stor...

but probably didn't happen that way.

Re: Knuth's Art of Computer Programming, V 4B, has gone into print

#138

Post by jjice »

rietta wrote: post #69

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.

My dad gave me them as a (fantastic) gift. They're tough. I haven't sat down and really gave them the old college try yet, but I want to at some point. I do feel a bit like a phony having them on my shelf without reading them yet though. They are brutal though.

Re: Knuth's Art of Computer Programming, V 4B, has gone into print

#139

Post by lupire »

Bayko wrote: post #2

Can 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

Do you normally expect to read encyclopedias for your job?

Re: Knuth's Art of Computer Programming, V 4B, has gone into print

#140

Post by lupire »

dyingkneepad wrote: post #111
kragen wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TAOCP is not job training now, if it ever was; that is trying to get the cart to pull the horse. The point of a job, unless you're lucky enough to get a job where you can change the world, is to pay your living expenses so that you have the leisure to do things like read TAOCP and write Sudoku solvers. If that's not your idea of an enjoyable vacation, don't read it; you'll regret it.

Writing a decent Sudoku solver takes just a few hours... I did this last year in order to refresh my memory on how Ruby worked. Reading TAOCP would take a few more hours than that.

Luckily, you are more than a few hours from death.
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