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

Thank you!

"Infinitely many alphabets can be generated by the programs in this book".

But the number of parameters is finite, and all parameters have a finite number of possible values.

His errata changed the wording thus:

Zillions of alphabets can be generated by the programs in this book. (https://ftp.rrze.uni-erlangen.de/ctan/systems/knuth/dist/err...)

FWIW, here's a side-ways mention of Knuth's bounty, from http://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/B5000-AlgolRWaychoff.html

> So I sat down with him and proofread the pages as they came out of the typewriter. It seemed that he was composing and typing as fast as I could read. By morning the manual was done. Years later when don's first book came but, he told me that if I would proofread it for him that he would pay me a dollar for every error that I found, including typographical errors. I took the offer as a great personal compliment at the time, but I think that he probably made that a standing-offer to anyone.

also from earlier in that essay:

> don claimed that he could write the compiler and a language manual all by himself during his three and a half month summer vacation. He said that he would do it for $5000. Our Fortran compiler required a card reader, card punch. line printer and automatic floating point. Don said that he would not need the card reader or card punch, but he wanted a magnetic tape unit and paper tape. I asked Gerard Guyod how Brad could have been suckered into paying this college kid $5000 to write something that had to be a piece of junk if he was only going to spend three and a half months on it. Gerard whispered his response to me. He said "We think that he already has it written. He probably did it in his spare time while working in the computer center at Case Institute." I still wasn't entirely satisfied with that answer because I was a college graduate whose first job was for 5325 per month and I had just changed jobs and was making $525 per month. Besides that it was taking mortal human beings 25 man-years to write compilers: not three and a half man-months. I thought that Brad had taker leave of his senses.

I'm not sure if TAoCP is "workplace on the job" material.

TAoCP is aiming at damn near "perfection" of programming. Donald Knuth is analyzing the exact assembly language of all of his decision-making with these algorithms. The assembly language is represented as a random variable, and an _exact_ count of those assembly language statements (in loops and other complex jumps) is analyzed.

Everything from the highest-level algorithm design / mathematical concepts is discussed... down to the lowest-level assembly level details / implementation of the code. And everything in between.

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As such, when Knuth / TAoCP covers a subject, it feels comprehensive, in a way that no other writer has ever accomplished.

So how does this work out in practice? Well, there's plenty of tutorials on hash tables out there. But only Knuth's writing on Hash tables / linear probing has ever hit the entire subject for me.

Other books will go over linear probing vs quadratic probing vs double-hashing. Meanwhile, Knuth carefully derives the formulas of each, and how it changes at the assembly level implementation.

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Is that useful for workplace environment? Probably not. In work, you only need to know "Linear Probing Hash Tables work like this, do it", and maybe not the analysis of it.

But if you're doing more fundamental programming, such as "GPU Implementation of Hash Table", something that very few other people have done... the Knuth-level analysis is the only thing that hits "rock bottom" and gives me all the insight "behind" the data-structure and its design.

I'd say Knuth's stuff is for people who invent new fundamental data-structures or other implementation details like that. Its not for typical workplace programming.

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For anyone who wants to know Knuth's writing style, I think his writing on Alpha-beta pruning (from the 1970s) is an excellent introduction to Knuth's writing style.

"An Analysis of Alpha-Beta Pruning" by Knuth / Moore, 1975.

Alpha-beta pruning always was kinda mystical to me. But Knuth recognizes the intermediate steps needed to understand the subject fully. The brilliance of discussing F1 (branch-and-bound) before discussing F2 (alpha-beta pruning) cannot be understated.

Knuth recognized that branch-and-bound is what most people thought of by Alpha-beta pruning. But then comes up with specific examples where F2 (true alpha-beta pruning) makes a difference over F1. And then uses math to demonstrate how often these cases come up.

Does it help in implementing AB pruning? I dunno. But it helps a lot if you wanna change AB pruning / change the fundamental search and understand why things are done that way. You only need to study "F2" if you're copy/paste programming. But the study and analysis into "F1" (branch and bound) holds deeper understandings to the entire concept of search trees.

Even if you never, ever, ever will program F1.

Speaking about Xerox PARC, about a month or so ago I was actually at the 50th anniversary of Smalltalk event at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View; Adele Goldberg participated in an in-person interview, and Dan Ingalls was also interviewed via live streaming. There were many luminaries in the audience, including David Ungar (one of the leading researchers behind the Self object-oriented programming language), but one standout moment was when a very tall elderly man walked up to me to read my nametag. It took me about 30 seconds to recognize that he was the author of Concrete Mathematics and The Art of Computer Programming: Donald Knuth!

Once I recognized him, I told him that I preordered a set of the latest edition of The Art of Computer Programming. He made a joke about collecting royalties from all the books he sold.

I'm glad I had the opportunity to speak to Donald Knuth! I actually saw him earlier this year at a Stanford symposium, but I didn't get to speak to him.