Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 192 posts

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

#161

Post by tenahu »

zlg_codes wrote: post #151
scrlk wrote: post #76

D. Richard Hipp used TACOP to implement a B-tree for SQLite: > "Nobody ever taught me about a B-tree. I had heard of it. When I went to write my own B-tree, on the bookshelf behind me, I’ve got Don Knuth’s The Art of Computer Programming, so I just pulled that down, I flipped to the chapter on searching and looked up B-trees and he described the algorithm. That’s what I did. Funny thing, Don gives us details on the a…

This is the first article or interview I've enjoyed reading in months . Thanks for sharing!

Top notch podcast, one of my favorites.

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

#162

Post by adastra22 »

svat wrote: post #160
adastra22 wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but the span of machine languages that are in actual use occupy a small cluster of possible design space. MIX, the language invented by Knuth, is not within this cluster. Maybe computer architectures in the 1960's looked like this, idk. I wouldn't know: I'm not that old. But it's also a weirdly esoteric, crusty machine language. If it was a Turing tape machine, or an idealized stack machine, that I'd understand…

When Knuth wrote MIX, it was indeed a mix of existing machine languages ( https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/a/18176 ) and very similar to them — but an improvement over them for pedagogy, e.g. even something as simple as his abstracting away the detail of whether the machine is a binary or a decimal computer. Of course decimal computers and self-modifying code, and a lot of other things besides, went out of fa…

I think you’re missing the forest for the trees here. Knuth shouldn’t have been using a machine language for his examples, full-stop. Nothing was gained by giving examples in needlessly complex and obtuse assembly language.

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

#163

Post by dmvdoug »

dwheeler wrote: post #156
dmvdoug wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 the…

If you believe the big advantage of Principia Mathematica was that it starts with a very few axioms and then manages to formally and exactly prove many things, then MPE is a worthy successor. I'm in that camp. However, if you think the main point of Principia Mathematica was the very specific set of axioms that they chose, then that's different. The PM authors chose to use a "ramified" theory of types, which is compl…

Although N.B.: it’s still an open question whether NF is consistent.

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

#164

Post by coolThingsFirst »

dang wrote: post #135
coolThingsFirst wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[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.

yeah, i'll fix it sorry

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

#165

Post by coolThingsFirst »

DonHopkins wrote: post #58
svat wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a guided study, but because doing the guided study is daunting and would take years, in practice many people (among those who read it at all) tend to use it as a reference, dipping in to specific topics here and there.

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

Here's the reason why this is totally wrong advice:

1) Time is important, there's ageism in tech and you need to plan your career wisely - no one is going to do it for you. The best way to learn is to get hired ASAP and get professional experience.

2) College degree is very important. In this market, people are struggling to get jobs with experience & degrees. You just have much less likelier chance of success without a degree. This appears all the time, even actual prodigies like George Hotz are overcompensating and always appear eager to prove that they have the fundamentals down like a CS grad.

3) Moving fast into building things which generate hype is the best course of action for young people

I know a friend that got to interview stage with a FAANG they told him the position was for university degree holders. This is an old essay and I'd always take with a grain of salt what people say versus how the reality is. It's very easy to get wrong advice that's no longer applicable.

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

#166

Post by _zoltan_ »

jimbomins wrote: post #130
_zoltan_ wrote: post #38

had he wrote it in 2 years in 1968, it would be long forgotten by now.

Probably because two years would let you produce a skinny inconsequential dip into a topic that would quickly be surpassed or barely distinguished from introductory texts on programming.

exactly my point ;)

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

#167

Post by rramadass »

rwmj wrote: post #123
rramadass wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For that you might want to accompany TAOCP with one of the heavyweight teaching books on Parallel Algorithms. Any recommendations/suggestions?

I was trying to find the book I had at university, which was excellent. However I can't find it right now. I would suggest looking at book recommendations from reputable university courses on parallel architectures.

Of course but i am curious to know somebody's personal preference (i have my own collection and preference) particularly when they juxtapose it with TAOCP. It would be nice if you could find the book which seems to have made a significant impression on you and add it here so it is useful to others.

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

#168

Post by lukeck »

rramadass wrote: post #167
rwmj wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was trying to find the book I had at university, which was excellent. However I can't find it right now. I would suggest looking at book recommendations from reputable university courses on parallel architectures.

Of course but i am curious to know somebody's personal preference (i have my own collection and preference) particularly when they juxtapose it with TAOCP. It would be nice if you could find the book which seems to have made a significant impression on you and add it here so it is useful to others.

Do you have any recommendations of your own that you can share?

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

#169

Post by dang »

coolThingsFirst wrote: post #164
dang wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

yeah, i'll fix it sorry

Appreciated!

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

#170

Post by rwmj »

rramadass wrote: post #167
rwmj wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was trying to find the book I had at university, which was excellent. However I can't find it right now. I would suggest looking at book recommendations from reputable university courses on parallel architectures.

Of course but i am curious to know somebody's personal preference (i have my own collection and preference) particularly when they juxtapose it with TAOCP. It would be nice if you could find the book which seems to have made a significant impression on you and add it here so it is useful to others.

Found the book I had at college, it was: https://dl.acm.org/doi/book/10.5555/156619 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Introduction-Parallel-Computing-Ana...
Post reply on HN