What an amazing exchange of ideas; Knuths response to Tarjans Q15 was particularly interesting since he was able to illustrate his insight with a concrete example; >Thus I think the present state of research in algorithm design misunderstands the true nature of efficiency. The literature exhibits a dangerous trend in contemporary views of what deserves to be published. > Another issue, when we come down to earth, is…
Reading that was rather vindicating. The same concern is raised by phk in his B-heap essay [1], where he criticizes Knuth for the exact same reason -- that algorithm analysis has become disconnected from the characteristics of the underlying hardware. While phk has a point, the dig at Knuth's work feels a bit unfair. In any case, I'm curious to see whether future editions of TAOCP note this caveat in its analysis. [1…
Re: Questions for Donald Knuth
#61Do you know of any resources that teaches this? I'm looking for a hypothetical book like "CLRS for VMs".