8 ms·

Thanks for being honest about it. Sad to see that it's downvoted. I guess people spent the time and effort and don't want to admit it might not have been valuab

by collyw 3y ago

Thanks for being honest about it. Sad to see that it's downvoted. I guess people spent the time and effort and don't want to admit it might not have been valuable.

Dudester230602 3y ago
Maybe people are still in a denial that all companies want is some LeetCode and funny scripting languages.
- anonzzzies 3y ago
  That's the only answer; SICP and TAOCP are totally useless in an average modern setting. People just copilot glue drivel all day long. You have to be interested in fundamentals and basically write low level stuff (OS/DB/PLD) to really benefit from these things and most, by a large margin, will never touch that stuff. Edit: for instance, there is now a SIMD article on HN #1; how many people actually are really interested in that? Those should overlap the people who would enjoy these books.
- sgift 3y ago
  Or maybe people don't care just about that but instead have a higher ambition in furthering their craft. Be it for joy, some sentiment of "getting better" or whatever. Yeah, sure, most of my days I'm a glorified data converter. I take data in whatever shoddy system and format the customer has it and bang on it long enough so that it fits into our own systems and can be used there. Does TAOCP help me with that? Well, maybe, mostly no though. I still treasure the parts I've read (I freely admit not having read all of it, but some parts and done some of the exercises) even if from some strict capitalist time = money point of view they probably wouldn't have been worth it.
- GuB-42 3y ago
  I think LeetCode is one of the activities where it is worth reading TAOCP, more than for most coders actual jobs.
defrost 3y ago
The comment above clearly and honestly stated that "your mileage may vary". Generally people that continue reading through TAOCP and invest the time and effort in doing so do get value from that or are foolish to keep going. I read the early volumes thoroughly in the 80s and 90s and got a lot of insight into, for one example, methods for constraining error when doing chained numerical calculations. His approach alone was inspiring at the time even if specific chapters weren't of any immediate interest. They're not especially useful for general journeyman programmers and they're but one star in the firmament for people aiming higher .. but they are worth the effort if the material is of interest.
- adastra22 3y ago
  But you’d get all that info, and more, from a numerical analysis textbook. When I read TAOCP it was right after university at the culmination of an 8 year process where I had self-studied a literal heap of graduate level texts and papers. I had been wrongly advised that TAOCP would be better saved as a capstone, where I could understand better its depths. It had no depth, and literally everything in it was better and more thoroughly explained by other works I had already engaged with. Oh, I did learn one very valuable thing: not to blindly trust the advice of others. I wish I had learned that earlier, in which case I could have thrown it on the DNF pile and gotten that month of my life back.
varjag 3y ago
There's hardly a chance that one would both (a) read through all of TAoCP and (b) not extract any value from that. The attention required to wade through the books can't be sustained if you have no interest.
- adastra22 3y ago
  Well, I did read through it all and got zero value.
  - starcraft2wol 3y ago
    So what do you do with your combinatorics, math, and logic skills that you got from reading?
    - adastra22 3y ago
      I’m not sure what you’re asking? I do a fair amount of algorithm development in my work. I’ve implemented C++ containers before. I just learned what I needed for that from sources other than Knuth, and those sources did a better and more thorough job explaining it.
txs 3y ago
How do you measure the value? I treasure these books, they've brought me so much joy over the years. They've likely not affected my career trajectory much, but they've absolutely enriched my personal life.
- matwood 3y ago
  Exactly. It’s hard define value. Did some random thing you read lead to some other insight? Can you link them directly? I think societies relentless pursuit of productivity and ROI has killed the creativity that comes from general knowledge.
- adastra22 3y ago
  There wasn’t anything useful in these books I didn’t already know from an extensive binge into CS theory and practice. There was no new insights either. There was a lot of useless knowledge that wasted time to cover, like how to optimize for his totally made up machine language.
  - stonogo 3y ago
    All machine languages are totally made up.
    - adastra22 3y ago
      Sure, but the span of machine languages that are in actual use occupy a small cluster of possible design space. MIX, the language invented by Knuth, is not within this cluster. Maybe computer architectures in the 1960's looked like this, idk. I wouldn't know: I'm not that old. But it's also a weirdly esoteric, crusty machine language. If it was a Turing tape machine, or an idealized stack machine, that I'd understand. Those are invented architectures that are amenable to analysis and in which the analysis (e.g. maximum stack size, maximum tape use) reflects fundamental properties of the algorithm. But MIX is just this weird thing that neither resembles CPUs you are likely to use, nor is it particularly useful for analysis.
      - 3y ago

by collyw 3y ago

Thanks for being honest about it. Sad to see that it's downvoted. I guess people spent the time and effort and don't want to admit it might not have been valuable.

Dudester230602 3y ago

Maybe people are still in a denial that all companies want is some LeetCode and funny scripting languages.

anonzzzies 3y ago
That's the only answer; SICP and TAOCP are totally useless in an average modern setting. People just copilot glue drivel all day long. You have to be interested in fundamentals and basically write low level stuff (OS/DB/PLD) to really benefit from these things and most, by a large margin, will never touch that stuff. Edit: for instance, there is now a SIMD article on HN #1; how many people actually are really interested in that? Those should overlap the people who would enjoy these books.
sgift 3y ago
Or maybe people don't care just about that but instead have a higher ambition in furthering their craft. Be it for joy, some sentiment of "getting better" or whatever. Yeah, sure, most of my days I'm a glorified data converter. I take data in whatever shoddy system and format the customer has it and bang on it long enough so that it fits into our own systems and can be used there. Does TAOCP help me with that? Well, maybe, mostly no though. I still treasure the parts I've read (I freely admit not having read all of it, but some parts and done some of the exercises) even if from some strict capitalist time = money point of view they probably wouldn't have been worth it.
GuB-42 3y ago
I think LeetCode is one of the activities where it is worth reading TAOCP, more than for most coders actual jobs.

defrost 3y ago

The comment above clearly and honestly stated that "your mileage may vary". Generally people that continue reading through TAOCP and invest the time and effort in doing so do get value from that or are foolish to keep going. I read the early volumes thoroughly in the 80s and 90s and got a lot of insight into, for one example, methods for constraining error when doing chained numerical calculations. His approach alone was inspiring at the time even if specific chapters weren't of any immediate interest. They're not especially useful for general journeyman programmers and they're but one star in the firmament for people aiming higher .. but they are worth the effort if the material is of interest.

adastra22 3y ago
But you’d get all that info, and more, from a numerical analysis textbook. When I read TAOCP it was right after university at the culmination of an 8 year process where I had self-studied a literal heap of graduate level texts and papers. I had been wrongly advised that TAOCP would be better saved as a capstone, where I could understand better its depths. It had no depth, and literally everything in it was better and more thoroughly explained by other works I had already engaged with. Oh, I did learn one very valuable thing: not to blindly trust the advice of others. I wish I had learned that earlier, in which case I could have thrown it on the DNF pile and gotten that month of my life back.

varjag 3y ago

There's hardly a chance that one would both (a) read through all of TAoCP and (b) not extract any value from that. The attention required to wade through the books can't be sustained if you have no interest.

adastra22 3y ago
Well, I did read through it all and got zero value.
- starcraft2wol 3y ago
  So what do you do with your combinatorics, math, and logic skills that you got from reading?
  - adastra22 3y ago
    I’m not sure what you’re asking? I do a fair amount of algorithm development in my work. I’ve implemented C++ containers before. I just learned what I needed for that from sources other than Knuth, and those sources did a better and more thorough job explaining it.

txs 3y ago

How do you measure the value? I treasure these books, they've brought me so much joy over the years. They've likely not affected my career trajectory much, but they've absolutely enriched my personal life.

matwood 3y ago
Exactly. It’s hard define value. Did some random thing you read lead to some other insight? Can you link them directly? I think societies relentless pursuit of productivity and ROI has killed the creativity that comes from general knowledge.
adastra22 3y ago
There wasn’t anything useful in these books I didn’t already know from an extensive binge into CS theory and practice. There was no new insights either. There was a lot of useless knowledge that wasted time to cover, like how to optimize for his totally made up machine language.
- stonogo 3y ago
  All machine languages are totally made up.
  - adastra22 3y ago
    Sure, but the span of machine languages that are in actual use occupy a small cluster of possible design space. MIX, the language invented by Knuth, is not within this cluster. Maybe computer architectures in the 1960's looked like this, idk. I wouldn't know: I'm not that old. But it's also a weirdly esoteric, crusty machine language. If it was a Turing tape machine, or an idealized stack machine, that I'd understand. Those are invented architectures that are amenable to analysis and in which the analysis (e.g. maximum stack size, maximum tape use) reflects fundamental properties of the algorithm. But MIX is just this weird thing that neither resembles CPUs you are likely to use, nor is it particularly useful for analysis.
    - 3y ago