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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 suspic

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
That's because there is a big difference between reading and understanding. Reading can just mean reading word by word, symbol by symbol then putting the book on the shelf. That ends up happening a lot with material that has a lot of formulas and theorems. It could take days for some to understand just a couple of pages. So basically I not surprised at all that you've met so many people who've read the volumes, but didn't all the subtleties. I think reading the volumes is the next step in status show-off step after buying and putting them on the shelf. Also, as many have pointed that MIX is just too obscure. Not knowing much about doesn't really indicate a lack of theoretical knowledge. I would personally skipped over those chapters.
- silentbicycle 16y ago
  I was more thinking along the lines of, "Oh yeah, I've read them all. Wait, MIX? What's that?" I've seen several equally dense, informative CS books (such as Dick Grune's _Parsing Techniques: A Practical Guide_), but Knuth has a specific sort of cachet among xkcd-quoting geek hipsters, so people namedropping him, make a pretense of having read them all the way through, etc.
joe_bleau 16y ago
Volume 2 is my favorite as well. I think that was the first time I'd been exposed to Benford's Law (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benfords_law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benfords_law).

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

That's because there is a big difference between reading and understanding. Reading can just mean reading word by word, symbol by symbol then putting the book on the shelf. That ends up happening a lot with material that has a lot of formulas and theorems. It could take days for some to understand just a couple of pages. So basically I not surprised at all that you've met so many people who've read the volumes, but didn't all the subtleties. I think reading the volumes is the next step in status show-off step after buying and putting them on the shelf. Also, as many have pointed that MIX is just too obscure. Not knowing much about doesn't really indicate a lack of theoretical knowledge. I would personally skipped over those chapters.

silentbicycle 16y ago
I was more thinking along the lines of, "Oh yeah, I've read them all. Wait, MIX? What's that?" I've seen several equally dense, informative CS books (such as Dick Grune's _Parsing Techniques: A Practical Guide_), but Knuth has a specific sort of cachet among xkcd-quoting geek hipsters, so people namedropping him, make a pretense of having read them all the way through, etc.

joe_bleau 16y ago

Volume 2 is my favorite as well. I think that was the first time I'd been exposed to Benford's Law (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benfords_law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benfords_law).