91–100 of 116 posts
Does Knuth have a protege, helping him today, and to carry on the task should it take decades still? Also, is there a condensed version of his work that preserves the spirit and rigor?
> Also, is there a condensed version of his work that preserves the spirit and rigor? I am not sure if this is useful for you, but Sedgewick's and Cormen's books are among more digestible alternatives.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Define 'need'. In college I learned, besides all the normal CS stuff: * writing * accounting * organizational psychology * small amounts of business stuff * lots of EE, digital and analog * how to read and write research papers * how to research * how to prove theorems (important if you are inventing your own) * linear algebra, calculus, stats and probability, discrete algebra * physics I-III, plus 1 semester of expe…
This. You realise the value of the time you pissed away only when it's too late. Unfortunately, college coincides with the most callow years of your life, when you scarcely know the value of time, or the opportunity you are about to squander. Sigh...
THIS IS THE BEST COMMENT YOU WILL READ TODAY, IF NOT THIS WEEK!!!!
Sorry for the all caps, but "truer words were never spoken".
So, anyone reading this who hasn't gone to college or who hasn't yet graduated, heed those words.
You will thank the poster perhaps 30 years later.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> books on PDF are electronic books. Kindles don't handle them well, but tablets do. Pdfs on current generation kindles (300dpi) look great, actually, as long as they are computer-generated. Scanned documents can be hit-or-miss, though.
Have you tried looking at any documents that are equation heavy on your kindle? Can it handle figures too?
I'm wondering if someone should be starting a new generation of TAOCP as wiki. As wonderful as TAOCP is, frankly, first volumes are bit outdated. Many problems that were mentioned opened have had huge progress and many new fields have opened up since their publications. Several Level 50 problems are now being taught in CS Masters or some even Bachelor levels. Besides I really find MIX too arcane and getting in the wa…
I'm wondering if someone should be starting a new generation of TAOCP as wiki. As wonderful as TAOCP is, frankly, first volumes are bit outdated. Many problems that were mentioned opened have had huge progress and many new fields have opened up since their publications. Several Level 50 problems are now being taught in CS Masters or some even Bachelor levels. Besides I really find MIX too arcane and getting in the wa…
Technology is fast moving. Computer Science, the real kind, moves slowly. TAOCP is still extremely relevant and MIX is cool, IMHO.
I'm wondering if someone should be starting a new generation of TAOCP as wiki. As wonderful as TAOCP is, frankly, first volumes are bit outdated. Many problems that were mentioned opened have had huge progress and many new fields have opened up since their publications. Several Level 50 problems are now being taught in CS Masters or some even Bachelor levels. Besides I really find MIX too arcane and getting in the wa…
>>These so-called "SAT solvers" are able to handle industrial-strength problems, involving millions of variables, with relative ease, andthey've had a profound impact on many areas of research such as computer-aided verification. I would be very interested in hearing of industrial/practical applications of those. Anyone with some experience?
I would say that SAT solvers (or SMT solvers, depending on the problem domain) are applicable to almost any kind of problem where the first thing that comes to your mind is implementing a brute-force search using backtracking. SAT solvers implement lots of tricks that are likely to leave naive backtracking algorithms in the dirt (knuth's chapter covers lots of them)
One silly example I like is the time I used a SAT solver to find the solutions for a little Flash puzzle game.
https://github.com/hugomg/hexiom
My favorite part is how I could add some symmetry-breaking predicates to greatly speed up the solver on highly symmetrical problem instances. Those instances are very hard for hand-written algorithms and a SAT solver let me work around the symmetry problems in a highly declarative manner.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can automate it for you... :)
I wasn't complaining that this was particularly onerous (in fact, I am always pleased how easily PostScript files open on Macs)!
If this is art then I'll have to admit - after 20 years of learning and practicing programming, I'm still a mechanic (or craftsman), not an artist. I will not be able to read and understand this book fully and I probably won't even try, unless I'm locked in a cell with it. Although I've helped build software used by millions, what I did was stitch together things that are too brilliant (or insane) for me to fully und…
Everyone with a good computer science education should be able to digest his books. I know that around here college education is often derided as outdated, impractical, too costly (which is a USA-ian problem), or outright irrelevant, but what Knuth writes about ain't rocket science yet important for many a programmer to understand. He writes in a quite readable style about the fundamentals of programming and computer…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This. You realise the value of the time you pissed away only when it's too late. Unfortunately, college coincides with the most callow years of your life, when you scarcely know the value of time, or the opportunity you are about to squander. Sigh...
college coincides with the most callow years of your life, when you scarcely know the value of time, or the opportunity you are about to squander THIS IS THE BEST COMMENT YOU WILL READ TODAY, IF NOT THIS WEEK!!!! Sorry for the all caps, but "truer words were never spoken". So, anyone reading this who hasn't gone to college or who hasn't yet graduated, heed those words. You will thank the poster perhaps 30 years later…
Thus, follow your heart- dwell not on what you did, nor on what you do, but listen to what you need. Long after, look back, and see, more clearly, what you need now.