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Ask HN: Is Knuth's TAOCP worth the time and effort?

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Re: Ask HN: Is Knuth's TAOCP worth the time and effort?

#131

Post by dmvdoug »

dwheeler wrote: post #90
dmvdoug wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Principia was an attempt to derive math from logical ground up, motivated by ideas about the foundations of mathematics and logic (wrong ones, it turned out). Knuth is more like A Magical Mystery Tour of Algorithms, wherein Knuth is both tour guide and man behind the curtain.

"Wrong" is too strong. The fundamental bases it used are not generally used today, but it was the first of its kind and inspired much. Many of its details are still fine. If you are interested in the underlying goal of Principia Mathematica, I urge you to check out the Metamath Proof Explorer (MPE): https://us.metamath.org/mpeuni/mmset.html By itself, Metamath doesn't have built-in axioms. MPE uses Metamath to first…

Yes, it was a tad tendentious, but I don’t think anyone really buys the logicist program anymore.

Don’t get me wrong, PM is marvelous and there’s no gainsaying its enormous historical impact.

If your characterization of Metamath is correct, I don’t think that’s in the spirit of PM at all. One of the major problems PM had was the rejection of (what later became) the Axiom of Choice in favor of Russell’s convoluted theory of types. Indeed, that set theory (ZFC) is needed to get the rest of the way R&W were trying to go is one of the signal failures of the logicist program behind PM.

Re: Ask HN: Is Knuth's TAOCP worth the time and effort?

#132

Post by jimbomins »

yomritoyj wrote: post #31

They are great books about some combinatorial mathematics inspired by programming problems. Not the best investment of time if you want to learn programming itself, because: 1. Most of the time you are not implementing foundational algorithms like sorting or SAT solving. You use mature implementation in libraries. 2. If you are in fact implementing foundational algorithms, then the existing volumes of Knuth cover onl…

I'm not sure your point "3." is wholly correct.

They do also go much wider than just combinatorial math.

Re: Ask HN: Is Knuth's TAOCP worth the time and effort?

#133

Post by dmvdoug »

voidhorse wrote: post #81
dmvdoug wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Principia was an attempt to derive math from logical ground up, motivated by ideas about the foundations of mathematics and logic (wrong ones, it turned out). Knuth is more like A Magical Mystery Tour of Algorithms, wherein Knuth is both tour guide and man behind the curtain.

It's a bit extreme imo to call Principia wrong . It isn't wrong so much as it will never completely succeed. These are two different things. The logical perspective presented in Principia is still sound and a relatively useful framework for understanding most of mathematics, and it's a monumental and impressive piece of work. I find it hard to believe anyone who has read it wouldn't leave with a better overall compre…

I didn’t say PM was wrong. I said the ideas behind it were—-although I should’ve said idea (singular) insofar as I was thinking in particular of the strong form of logicism motivating Russell.

Re: Ask HN: Is Knuth's TAOCP worth the time and effort?

#134

Post by mortallywounded »

Much of what you'll read and learn in the books won't have any immediate impact on you or your career. If there is an impact, it will be subtle.

Does that mean you shouldn't read it? Maybe. Honestly, it doesn't matter if you read it or not. Do it if you want to, but do it without the expectation of getting something out of it.

If you want a return on investment for your time, you're better of building something with the knowledge you already have. Put the books away and create something.

Re: Ask HN: Is Knuth's TAOCP worth the time and effort?

#135

Post by dang »

coolThingsFirst wrote: post #104
DonHopkins wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're looking for a shortcut, read Peter Norvig's "Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years". https://norvig.com/21-days.html

[flagged]

Please don't post shallow dismissals. If another comment is wrong, it's great to explain why (as long as you do it without swipes etc. - see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). But if you don't explain why, the comment doesn't contain any information that people can learn from, and is just a putdown. We're trying to avoid that here.

Re: Ask HN: Is Knuth's TAOCP worth the time and effort?

#136

Post by dctoedt »

dorfsmay wrote: post #95
ralferoo wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weirdly, probably not. I know if I sold it, then I'd suddenly get the urge to read it. Also, it's really heavy (I'd say at least over 1kg), so by the time I sold it at less than the current price because it's no longer new (also mine is 1-4A, the current edition is 1-4B) and paid postage to package and ship it somewhere, it's probably not really worth the effort.

Memento Mori. You should imagine that you are forced to sell it every day. Eventually you'll either sell it (or donate it (your local library might appreciate it)) or start reading it.

> You should imagine that you are forced to sell it every day.

Semi-serious question: Which of the following do you mean:

A. Every day, you should imagine that you are forced to sell it; or

B. You should imagine that you will, every day, be forced to sell it.

(I teach law students to spot and fix ambiguities in draft contracts; this would be a nice practice example :-) )

Re: Ask HN: Is Knuth's TAOCP worth the time and effort?

#137

Post by adastra22 »

defrost wrote: post #14
collyw wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for being honest about it. Sad to see that it's downvoted. I guess people spent the time and effort and don't want to admit it might not have been valuable.

The comment above clearly and honestly stated that "your mileage may vary". Generally people that continue reading through TAOCP and invest the time and effort in doing so do get value from that or are foolish to keep going. I read the early volumes thoroughly in the 80s and 90s and got a lot of insight into, for one example, methods for constraining error when doing chained numerical calculations. His approach alone…

But you’d get all that info, and more, from a numerical analysis textbook.

When I read TAOCP it was right after university at the culmination of an 8 year process where I had self-studied a literal heap of graduate level texts and papers. I had been wrongly advised that TAOCP would be better saved as a capstone, where I could understand better its depths.

It had no depth, and literally everything in it was better and more thoroughly explained by other works I had already engaged with.

Oh, I did learn one very valuable thing: not to blindly trust the advice of others. I wish I had learned that earlier, in which case I could have thrown it on the DNF pile and gotten that month of my life back.

Re: Ask HN: Is Knuth's TAOCP worth the time and effort?

#138

Post by sn9 »

HelloNurse wrote: post #51
linguae wrote: post #9

One suggestion: if the mathematical preliminary section in Volume 1 of TAOCP is too difficult, you might benefit from the textbook Concrete Mathematics by Graham, Knuth, and Patashnik. Concrete Mathematics is essentially a gentler (but still rigorous) introduction to the mathematical concepts covered in the first volume of TAOCP.

I confirm it has a similar general style, very high quality, rigorous and readable, but in the format of a textbook rather than an encyclopedia.

And it also includes full solutions in the back so it's great for self-study if you have the prereqs (probably calculus and maybe an earlier exposure to discrete math).

Re: Ask HN: Is Knuth's TAOCP worth the time and effort?

#139

Post by adastra22 »

txs wrote: post #18
collyw wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for being honest about it. Sad to see that it's downvoted. I guess people spent the time and effort and don't want to admit it might not have been valuable.

How do you measure the value? I treasure these books, they've brought me so much joy over the years. They've likely not affected my career trajectory much, but they've absolutely enriched my personal life.

There wasn’t anything useful in these books I didn’t already know from an extensive binge into CS theory and practice. There was no new insights either.

There was a lot of useless knowledge that wasted time to cover, like how to optimize for his totally made up machine language.

Re: Ask HN: Is Knuth's TAOCP worth the time and effort?

#140

Post by adastra22 »

varjag wrote: post #15
collyw wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for being honest about it. Sad to see that it's downvoted. I guess people spent the time and effort and don't want to admit it might not have been valuable.

There's hardly a chance that one would both (a) read through all of TAoCP and (b) not extract any value from that. The attention required to wade through the books can't be sustained if you have no interest.

Well, I did read through it all and got zero value.
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