6 ms·

Probably more of a status symbol for most people. How many of you actually read these books carefully?

gjm11 16y ago
1. Me, at least, and I'm absolutely certain I'm far from unique. 2. There's nothing wrong or status-symbol-y about using books of this sort for reference, and reading only the bits one needs.
- amichail 16y ago
  What's wrong with less cryptic books like these? http://www.amazon.com/Algorithm-Design-Jon-Kleinberg/dp/0321295358/ http://www.amazon.com/Algorithm-Design-Jon-Kleinberg/dp/0321... http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Algorithms-Third-Thomas-Cormen/dp/0262033844 http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Algorithms-Third-Thomas-C...
  - xtacy 16y ago
    Depth. I have read CLRS (the second book in your list); it's really great as an introductory text as it spans a lot of areas. For example, sorting/searching is a chapter in CLRS, while it's a volume in itself in TAOCP (The Art Of Computer Programming). Also, CLRS is written in the style of a textbook, rather than a reference and a newbie would find it easier to follow. And, TAOCP is more of an in-depth reference to practically everything that has been researched in that field so far.
    - amichail 16y ago
      How many people need this level of depth?
      - deleted 16y ago
        [deleted]
      - tomjen3 16y ago
        A lot more than you would think - there are plenty of programmers out there that can't tell you the tradeoffs between the different approaches, and they can get away with it, because it appears to work (see thread synchronization, cross-site scripting, data-base injection, null pointers, pointer overflow, etc, etc) until somebody demonstrates that it doesn't.
        glhaynes 16y ago
        thread synchronization, cross-site scripting, data-base injection, null pointers, pointer overflow Does TAOCP cover any of those?
        deleted 16y ago
        [deleted]
        tomjen3 16y ago
        I would expect it to have plenty of algorithms to implement mutexes with, as well as parallel sort algorithms. There are also going to be a lot of pointer based tricks that you don't get unless you really understand pointers.
gyepi 16y ago
A rather superficial status symbol, I'd say: owning a book does not equate to knowing or understanding its contents. I purchased my copies individually (back when I was a student and I could ill afford them) and, ignoring Knuth's suggesting algorithm for reading the series, read the "interesting" sections quite carefully. I still use them for reference and occasionally find time to re-read parts of it.
- gjm11 16y ago
  Pretty ineffective status symbol, too. How many people whom you might want to impress are going to see exactly what's on your bookshelves, and know enough to recognize Knuth as impressive? I'll hazard a guess that most people for whom those are true also know enough to be more influenced by other more meaningful things than what books you happen to have on your shelves. (I bet some people do buy Knuth as a sort of status signal to themselves, though.)
  - kjhgfgbhnj 16y ago
    I wonder if heavily thumbed annotated editions cost more?
brianm 16y ago
I use them as references probably more often than any other books I own. That said, I use the internets an order of magnitude more.
silentbicycle 16y ago
I've read parts of vol. 2, especially about random number generation. I found it in a library book sale for a quarter. THAT made my day. :) I've found a suspiciously high percentage of the people who have totally! read the Art of Computer Programming are unable to answer even basic questions about MIX, by the way.
- vdoma 16y ago
  Well, they're difficult books to read to begin with. Knuth himself would be surprised if someone has read and understood them all. At the same time, I find they're hyped up a bit (like SICP). There are plenty of other really good algorithms books IMHO.
  - sp332 16y ago
    http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Close_Encounters_of_the_Steve_Kind.txt http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Close_Encounters_of_t... (Knuth denies this ever happened.)
    - gjm11 16y ago
      At http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1266502 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1266502 someone cites a particular occasion on which Knuth supposedly denied the story. As I remarked then, "full of shit" seems quite an unknuth expression.
- okmjuhb 16y ago
  That's pretty reasonable with MIX, given that it's a terrible language that was obsolete before it was invented and that all the algorithms are described in English as well.
  - silentbicycle 16y ago
    No, like they'd never heard of it.
- rdtsc 16y ago
Someone 16y ago
I read and understood volumes 1 to 3 front-to-back. I do not think it is that hard to understand, compared to e.g. complex analysis or number theory. Didn't work hard enough on some the exercises, but certainly understood all the simpler ones. I would not recommend reading this to every (would-be) programmer or computer scientist, though. Especially for those wanting to program on 1GHz+ CPUs with 1GB+ RAM, there are things that are more immediately useful. Also, even for the low-level stuff the content of the books is getting seriously dated (e.g. due to the absence of multi-threaded algorithms)
rikthevik 16y ago
I keep them around as a reminder that Computer Science is math. Being able to reason and think mathematically is an important skill for any programmer. A person can go pretty far doing web work and using scripting languages, but when you get into serious programming (heavily concurrent, resource-critical, real-time, etc) you need to understand the fundamentals. Having Knuth up on the shelf reminds me to take a second and say, "Hey, think this through some more. Knuth probably figured it out already."
rwmj 16y ago
The first three, in detail. I even tried and failed to do many of the higher exercises :-(
ww520 16y ago
I have to admit I haven't read the books, lower head in shame. It was too expensive when I was a poor student. Interestingly years later at work there were some Romanian exchange students doing summer internship. When they left, we bought gifts for them. A coworker and I bought the 3rd Volume to give to one of them. That really made her day.
jules 16y ago
I read the first book and didn't find it particularly good. You don't learn a lot from them. You do learn a lot of irrelevant details (like how his machine language works).
Locke1689 16y ago
I used it as an algorithm reference for memory allocation.

gjm11 16y ago

1. Me, at least, and I'm absolutely certain I'm far from unique. 2. There's nothing wrong or status-symbol-y about using books of this sort for reference, and reading only the bits one needs.

amichail 16y ago
What's wrong with less cryptic books like these? http://www.amazon.com/Algorithm-Design-Jon-Kleinberg/dp/0321295358/ http://www.amazon.com/Algorithm-Design-Jon-Kleinberg/dp/0321... http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Algorithms-Third-Thomas-Cormen/dp/0262033844 http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Algorithms-Third-Thomas-C...
- xtacy 16y ago
  Depth. I have read CLRS (the second book in your list); it's really great as an introductory text as it spans a lot of areas. For example, sorting/searching is a chapter in CLRS, while it's a volume in itself in TAOCP (The Art Of Computer Programming). Also, CLRS is written in the style of a textbook, rather than a reference and a newbie would find it easier to follow. And, TAOCP is more of an in-depth reference to practically everything that has been researched in that field so far.
  - amichail 16y ago
    How many people need this level of depth?
    - deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
    - tomjen3 16y ago
      A lot more than you would think - there are plenty of programmers out there that can't tell you the tradeoffs between the different approaches, and they can get away with it, because it appears to work (see thread synchronization, cross-site scripting, data-base injection, null pointers, pointer overflow, etc, etc) until somebody demonstrates that it doesn't.
      - glhaynes 16y ago
        thread synchronization, cross-site scripting, data-base injection, null pointers, pointer overflow Does TAOCP cover any of those?
        deleted 16y ago
        [deleted]
        tomjen3 16y ago
        I would expect it to have plenty of algorithms to implement mutexes with, as well as parallel sort algorithms. There are also going to be a lot of pointer based tricks that you don't get unless you really understand pointers.

gyepi 16y ago

A rather superficial status symbol, I'd say: owning a book does not equate to knowing or understanding its contents. I purchased my copies individually (back when I was a student and I could ill afford them) and, ignoring Knuth's suggesting algorithm for reading the series, read the "interesting" sections quite carefully. I still use them for reference and occasionally find time to re-read parts of it.

gjm11 16y ago
Pretty ineffective status symbol, too. How many people whom you might want to impress are going to see exactly what's on your bookshelves, and know enough to recognize Knuth as impressive? I'll hazard a guess that most people for whom those are true also know enough to be more influenced by other more meaningful things than what books you happen to have on your shelves. (I bet some people do buy Knuth as a sort of status signal to themselves, though.)
- kjhgfgbhnj 16y ago
  I wonder if heavily thumbed annotated editions cost more?

brianm 16y ago

I use them as references probably more often than any other books I own. That said, I use the internets an order of magnitude more.

silentbicycle 16y ago

I've read parts of vol. 2, especially about random number generation. I found it in a library book sale for a quarter. THAT made my day. :) I've found a suspiciously high percentage of the people who have totally! read the Art of Computer Programming are unable to answer even basic questions about MIX, by the way.

vdoma 16y ago
Well, they're difficult books to read to begin with. Knuth himself would be surprised if someone has read and understood them all. At the same time, I find they're hyped up a bit (like SICP). There are plenty of other really good algorithms books IMHO.
- sp332 16y ago
  http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Close_Encounters_of_the_Steve_Kind.txt http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Close_Encounters_of_t... (Knuth denies this ever happened.)
  - gjm11 16y ago
    At http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1266502 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1266502 someone cites a particular occasion on which Knuth supposedly denied the story. As I remarked then, "full of shit" seems quite an unknuth expression.
okmjuhb 16y ago
That's pretty reasonable with MIX, given that it's a terrible language that was obsolete before it was invented and that all the algorithms are described in English as well.
- silentbicycle 16y ago
  No, like they'd never heard of it.
rdtsc 16y ago

Someone 16y ago

I read and understood volumes 1 to 3 front-to-back. I do not think it is that hard to understand, compared to e.g. complex analysis or number theory. Didn't work hard enough on some the exercises, but certainly understood all the simpler ones. I would not recommend reading this to every (would-be) programmer or computer scientist, though. Especially for those wanting to program on 1GHz+ CPUs with 1GB+ RAM, there are things that are more immediately useful. Also, even for the low-level stuff the content of the books is getting seriously dated (e.g. due to the absence of multi-threaded algorithms)

rikthevik 16y ago

I keep them around as a reminder that Computer Science is math. Being able to reason and think mathematically is an important skill for any programmer. A person can go pretty far doing web work and using scripting languages, but when you get into serious programming (heavily concurrent, resource-critical, real-time, etc) you need to understand the fundamentals. Having Knuth up on the shelf reminds me to take a second and say, "Hey, think this through some more. Knuth probably figured it out already."

rwmj 16y ago

The first three, in detail. I even tried and failed to do many of the higher exercises :-(

ww520 16y ago

I have to admit I haven't read the books, lower head in shame. It was too expensive when I was a poor student. Interestingly years later at work there were some Romanian exchange students doing summer internship. When they left, we bought gifts for them. A coworker and I bought the 3rd Volume to give to one of them. That really made her day.

jules 16y ago

I read the first book and didn't find it particularly good. You don't learn a lot from them. You do learn a lot of irrelevant details (like how his machine language works).

Locke1689 16y ago

I used it as an algorithm reference for memory allocation.