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Knuth's Volume IV Preview Available Online
ahto writes: "The first section of volume 4 of Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming is available for peer review (and the $2.56 finder's fee for every typo is still there :)." Knuth's series-in-progress made a lot of people's lists when it came to assembling the perfect collection of library books for computer science; now you have a chance to make the next one better. If you can find any mistakes, that is.
Dunno 'bout that -- I've met a lot of Windows programmers who've never read Knuth, and I've met a lot of *nix programmers who've never read Knuth. The key factors appear to me to be age and variety of work (it seems to me that older, systems-level coders are much more likely to have gone through some volume of TAOCP at some point).
Admittedly, most of the older, systems-level coders I've met have been *nix folks -- so it may be that I'm seeing the same trend you are and just interpreting it differently.
Knuth books are the material proof that software patents are stupid. I mean 99% of what you need to create a software is in Knuth Books; every useful algorithme, sorting, searching, tables look up, indexing methods are there, all the basic.
It's the proof that nearly everything has been said in that field, and patenting software is in fact patenting "the function" and not "the organ" !
I am a software engineer. I have read Knuth. I write software for Windows more often than I do for Unix for the simple reason that more clients want to pay me to do so.
Yeah, why couldn't this Knuth guy write in a decent format, like Word? Doesn't he know that only losers use Unix and Postscript these days?
Could be worse.
Could be Harlan Ellison's edit of Last Dangerous Visions (I'd link to Christopher Priest's Last Deadloss Visions, the story of Ellison's failure, but Priest has taken it to print and forced it off the net...)
--Blair
I have found "The Algorithm Design Manual" invaluable.
Mundus vult decipi - "The world wants to be deceived"
name the subject you want help in. i will try to name some decent references. give examples, too, maybe.
A: None. The Universe spins the bulb, and the Zen master merely stays out of the way.
err, what exactly do you mean by, your average Windows programmer? What is a Windows programmer? If a Windows programmer uses C++ what is he? How about Java? How about Python or Perl? What do you mean by Windows programmer? I suppose you call yourself a Linux/Unix programmer. What does that mean? Do you patch kernels? What do you mean? Knucklehead with a superiority complex, that's what I think YOU are.
I would never buy a Knuth Hexidecimal check. I wouldn't feel that I deserved it, unless it had my name on it.
garc
It's been a long wait since the first three book of TAOCP came out (in the 80's I suppose). I first saw volume 1 in 1973, so for me it's been an even longer wait...
I've heard a wonderful Picasso story, but I don't know if it's true, or just a story.
...
...
The story goes that in the early 1970s, near the end of Picasso's life, a young couple in the United States, admirers of his work, wrote Picasso a letter. In the letter, they told him that they loved his work, but were young and couldn't afford any of his pieces. They enclosed a check for $50.00, and wrote in the letter (truthfully) that this was all they could afford, and that if Picasso had any piece that he would consider selling for this price, they would like to purchase it. If not, the letter asked that Picasso tear up the check.
The couple sent off the check, and received no reply. Then, over a year later, they received a thin airmail letter from Spain
... containing no letter, just their uncashed check. With an unsigned drawing on the back
which currently resides, framed, on their wall!
You know, I've read the Java Virtual Machine Specifications, and I wrote a small compiler that would output Java classes, and I don't recall any op codes with garbage collection built into them. Perhaps you can share which ones these are?
-no broken link
And that my friend, would be the case if none would have thought of plastic boxes before. You can get a patent on applying known concepts in a way that is innovative. For example using a chainsaw for slicing bread (to mention something patently stupid) could be innovative enough to warrant a patent.
-- Spelling and grammar errors tend to be a sign of erroneous thinking.
Don't you mean $10.28? That's 2^10 cents.
Thank goodness for those patents, we wouldn't want to see any competition without a significant investment in licensing fees. That would be unamerican. Let's all feel smug for Adobe, seeing as how they're such nice guys... I mean, what's one Russian's life worth compared to defending a poor encryption scheme?
This isn't really a preview of Volume 4: Combinatorial Algorithms. It's an "Addendum to Volume 1 (tutorial on MMIX)" as stated on Knuth's TAOCP page under Errata for Volume 1. Knuth's TAOCP page = http://sunburn.stanford.edu/~knuth/taocp.html
j00 4cc3pt s0me w4r3z in5t34d?
But then again, it was in 7.2.1, not 7.2.1.1, so maybe it doesn't count?
bla
Knuth's books aren't targeted at shareware programmers writing MP3 players, they're targeted at programmers trying to solve difficult problems, problems that are hard enough that there are no prepackaged libraries. Things like Google and the Human Genome Project that require a significant amount of novel code, and where optimization is almost all picking the right algorithm. This is especially true for the types of problems in volume IV. (Incidentally, there seems to be a lot of overlap with The Stanford GraphBase, published about 8 years ago).
eventually you approach a point where anything you write down is obsolete the next day
That depends on your subject. When you're writing about fundamentals of computer science, it doesn't change nearly that fast.
Turing submitted his seminal work describing what we call a 'Turing machine' in 1936. Except for quantum computing and other non-deterministic models, every notion in computer science must fit within its framework.
Jon von Neumann wrote papers that describe what we call a 'von Neumann architecture' in 1945. The vast and overwhelming majority of computers ever built have been von Neumann machines.
Bubblesort, mergesort, quicksort, and heapsort were all invented before 1970. They remain the most commonly used used generalized sorting algorithms to this day.
Thinking that the latest language or operating system du jour invalidates everything that came before is really just cultural myopia.
something like this begs to be continued beyond the author. I think the majority of you know what I'm leading to.
I don't think that Professor Knuth would agree with that. As some of you may happen to know, we could take TeX and METAfont as examples: nowadays, only allowed modifications are bugfixes which get a new decimal digit, and he dictated that when he will die, the reference code shall be frozen, any further bug will be promoted to feature, and their version number will be \pi and e.
DEK is utterly mad: nobody could stop writing TAOCP because of unsatisfaction about how the books were printed, then study typography and coming out with TeX and MF.
But this is why we love him.
ciao,ps: I'd really love to see him playing his pipe organ
Not only do these things make the book unnecessarily hard to read when you're learning stuff for the first time, because you have to pay attention to the complexity of the coding style instead focusing on the ideas that the code is expressing, but it makes it even harder to use as a reference book when you're no longer in the midst of an undergraduate heavy reading phase and just trying to find out about the kinds of algorithms that apply to the problems you're solving.
If you were writing something like this today, it's a tossup whether the right language to use for the assembly portions would be the ugly but well-known and widely available Intel 8086 assemblers, or Java Bytecode which are a simpler model for a virtual machine.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
WOW.. I've always thought that the Windows program "Paint Shop Pro" by Jasc was as good, if not better, then Adobe Photoshop. It's a great example of "shareware" (trailware?) that's as good, if not better, then some of the comercial stuff out there.. anyway, I double clicked this postscript file, just for the hell of it.. and guess what? PSP can view postscript, and render it with all kinds of nifty options (anti aliasing etc). This program never ceases to amaze me...
Thank you. I will go to FSF and check it out.
E
http://eugeneciurana.com | http://ciurana.eu
Wasn't it Dijksta who originally flamed gotos? http://www.acm.org/classics/oct95/
-- What do you need?
-- Gnus. Lots of Gnus.
Number theory sucks. Go learn something useful - like abstract algebra.
As the patent holder of slicing bread with a chainsaw, I demand that you either C&D or pay me royalties of 5% on income made off the idea.
Offices of Dewey, Chetum, and Howe
If you haven't read SICP, you're not a programmer either.
Hmm, 2.56 per error. Guess I'll get to reading!
NightmareDNS =)
Most linux distributions will include gv (or the less-pretty program, ghostview, which it acts as a frontend for, or the backend, ghostscript, which does the real work for both).
ghostscript also includes 'ps2pdf', which does exactly what the name implies.
A newer, gnomified frontend is 'ggv'; if ya like gnome, play with it.
There's also a Windows version of ghostview available; that should also Work For You if you're working on such a platform.
"IMHO, if you haven't read Knuth's work, you aren't a programmer."
You wrote:
There are plenty of people out there who've read (and even understood) Knuth's books, yet who still write horrible spaghetti code.
For someone who evaulates programmers you seem to have a little trouble with logic. He doesn't say that reading Knuth makes one a programmer.
I used the taocp account but am not sure if this is the right one.
I don't think an understanding of the algorithms always requires an assembly language presentation. These days most of the algorithms will be implemented in higher-level languages anyway. It's just his style to present them that way. Surely the old MIX would have been good enough, he's just having fun inventing something new.
It's funny, you actually beat me to that exact comment. :)
...
Found just two articles down on the front page:
On the geek side, their server is a Radio Shack 2.4mhz TRS-80 Model 100 portable running a port of Aache and PHP." Something seems extremely suspicious about that server
I could put myself through college finding typos on Slashdot...
I have the first three volumes (the dedication is classic), but looking in the jacket I saw more than just the first 3 volumes listed. I recall seeing a volume on parsing (volume 5) (?) Maybe it was in a nightmare b/c I have a CLI project coming up :P
Now if Knuth told us that he'd originally conceieved the 4th book before the first 3, or that he was getting special effects or merchandising consults to work with him, well, yes, then it would be time to worry...
;-)
Only if he released revised versions of 1, 2 and 3 first.
--red5
Since when has christianity been warlike?
Of course people can be warlike, but few religions have anything to say about it, besides something to the nature of love thy neighbour.
Well, actually he did. He laid out the proposed structure for all seven in the series before the first one was published.
He even laid out a rough schedule.
As good as he is, he does share one trait with most of his fellow software types, an inability to
generate a reasonable schedule.
All seven books were supposed to have been completed many years ago.
He's not only late, he's got three more volumes to go!
link at Amazon (sorry)
I used it several years ago (although it was the FORTRAN version of the book) to solve some optimization problems using simulated annealing.
Not an in-depth treatment, but it does cover a wide variety of subjects fairly well.
I thought this was the fourth -edition- of "The C Programming Language," not the fourth -volume- of "The Art of Programming," and found myself wondering...
If the first edition is the Old Testament, and the second edition is the New Testament, then the third -might- be called the Book of Mormon...then what would be the fourth edition?
These are the questions which keep me up late at night...
My copy of volume 1 is copyright 1973 (second edition, first edition was 1968). My copy of volume 2 is copyright 1969. Volume 3 is copyright 1973.
Don't you mean $10.28? That's 2^10 cents.
When you're going to take the time to point out what everyone knows is just a simple, careless mistake, you shouldn't make one yourself.
I've always thought that the truly amazing thing about Knuth's books is the writing. Few writers, be they technical writers, journalists, or novelists, write as clearly.
hey you scratch my back I'll scartch yours.
mefus
In Open Society, GPL Software frees YOU!
Wonderful advice. Thank you. 1024.
Thanks! That worked.
thank you--that works!
Folks, let's not be so hard on this guy. Since log_2(1048) is about 10.033, then obviously, about 10.033 mistakes have been discovered in Knuth's books so far.
Always keep a sapphire in your mind
His work is so expansive, so fundimental, and so generalized that the original books from the early 70's still apply today. It's really amazing.
Numerical Recipes is problematic.
...) and is often buggy.
See http://math.jpl.nasa.gov/nr/ parts of which are probably unfair, as it is mostly about the first edition, and some of it looks like "pilot error", but overall this doesn't generate confidence.
Their code generally sucks (loops in the wrong order, lots of variables with names like ii, h, jj, excess allocation,
The authors (admittedly) are not experts in the field of numerical computation.
The book best serves as a travel guide to a reasonably large subset of the field of numerical computations. When you actually arrive at the destination, you recognize that the guide got some parts wrong, but you feel more comfortable having read it.
Try the Guide to Available Mathematical Software
http://gams.nist.gov/ or netlib http://netlib.org/ instead.
I have a book from an AI class,
Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach by Stuart Russel and Peter Norvig (ISBN 0-13-103805-2)
that covers the Markov Chain and Genetic algorithms, but not Monte Carlo.
Monte Carlo is more of a computation/scientific programming random sample approach, whereas the random sample in Genetic algorithms are the functions themselves, and not the data.
(nil)
Get the following book: How To Solve It: Modern Heuristics By Zbigniew Mihalewicz Published by Springer Verlag This is a great book and contains info on all of the algo's you mentioned in your post. Cheers. BobRock
Why do you say he dissed goto's? The paper of his I rememeber on the subject, said that they were frequently not the best way to do things, then spent the rest of the paper talking about places where they were the most efficent way to do things.
and the $2.56 finder's fee for every typo is still there
If only slashdot offered the same deal, I'd be a rich bastid.
AC's cheerfully ignored
Only problem with the Cormen, Leiserson, and Rivest text is the strange pseudocode langauge they chose. The indentation style makes it very difficult for me to read the code, which is odd, because IMO pseudocode is supposed to be so free of syntactic details that it is the most readable code. But I frequently had to thotoughly examine it to understand which if was being closed where, and so on.
Other than the pseudocode, I'd agree, it's a good, comprehensive algorithms book. I think it easily fills 3 dense semesters of intensive study.
And "throw" is not a "goto" ?
Same for "EXEC SQL .... ON ERROR ...."
Plus all those callbacks in "X" are fundementally the hated COBOL "ALTER .. GO TO".
Old COBOL programmers never die. They just code in C.
No-one reads Knuth. *nix programmers just claim they did.
It's the same with K& R, K & P, Stroustroup, (Eric | Bertrand) Meyer et al. OTOH, at lest they're aware the names are worth dropping, so I guess your fundamental point is right.
Either way, he's been writing it long enough that you could subtitle it "The Phantom Menace"
-JTB
I think he meant mean. Where's my $2.56?
Trouble is: it's not representative. It may barely approximate what modern RISC machines do, but it will be very different from the multithreaded, VLIW, and parallel machines that are coming into the mainstream.
higher level languages go in and out of vogue too quickly
Most computer scientists have no problem communicating in a Pascal-like pseudo-code, independent of any particular programming language.
If you haven't read E.W.Dijkstra's work, you're not a programmer. Help yourself.
Applying this line of argument further, one should also toss aside other old-fashioned dinosaurs like Darwin, Newton, von Neumann (and his silly single-cpu virtual machines), Pasteur, Des Cartes...the list is long, far longer than janpod66's memory or appreciation of the history of science.
Knuth does not offer "nuggets." Like other great scientists, he offers bedrock, a firmament upon which to build. As Newton himself said, "If I have seen farther than other men, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants." Knuth is a giant who helps people see farther.
If you sling code for a living, you are a technologist. That is high praise in my book, but it is not the same thing as a scientist, who is not as concerned with application as he/she is with understanding. Most technologists don't need any bedrock, just a toehold in their niche. That's perfectly OK. The world needs both good technologists and good scientists.
Knuth is not for people looking for algorithm cookbooks and subroutine libraries, but for those who want scientific understanding of computer programming. Newton's Principia is not particularly useful to an engineer caculating a modulus of tension for a bridge girder, but whatever textbook the engineer was taught from rests firmly on pilings driven into the Principia.
Look around. Everything has a new version number, more megahertz, new distro, fresh sound, hot new cuisine, just-invented slang, on and on and on. Well, almost everything. There are still a few things that are eternal, classic, don't need to change with time because they are indeed timeless. Donald Knuth will never sell as many copies as Java for Dummies, or even Niklaus Wirth's Algorithms + Data Structures = Programs, but his books will still be read when the others have disappeared in the hole of time.
Try Richard Crandall's Projects in Scientific Computation perhaps? It covers all of these and more in one book.
NetBSD: the cathedral vs the bizzare.
You could say that it has already converged -- it has always been $2.56.
m l) says, "$2.56 is one hexidecimal dollar". Delightfully odd, that Knuth guy. ;)
As his faq (http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/faq.ht
Start Time: Thursday, August 09, 2001 at 8:21 PM Destination: C:\TEMP\VVFJKLIB.pdf Source: VVFJKLIB.ps %%[ Error: undefined; OffendingCommand: ]%% %%[ Flushing: rest of job (to end-of-file) will be ignored ]%% %%[ Warning: PostScript error. No PDF file produced. ] %% Distill Time: 0 seconds (00:00:00) **** End of Job ****
The material in Knuth's books is trivial compared to a one-click button. Now that's genius!!!
mefus
In Open Society, GPL Software frees YOU!
Another one of Knuth's major contributions is the creation of the TeX text formatting package.
The mathematical expression output of TeX is incredibly elegant and has yet been matched by any other text formatting package, especially the (comparably) utter filth produced by Microsoft.
In a pre-TeX world, mathematical typesetting was extremely costly and time consuming. TeX had in fact revolutionized the world of creating scientific documents. It is to mathematic/scientific writing what C is to software development. Its use is widespread that in most universities, it is absolutely required that any kind of academic paper in a science faculty be produced with a TeX-derived formatting package.
The coolest thing is, inventing TeX is something Knuth hardly mentions, let alone brags about. It seems to me that Knuth considers TeX as "something he cooked up a few years ago".
In my opinion, you are a stroker.
The things in Knuth's books don't change. they are the fundamental underlying ideas.
Those words, under the rocks, under the river of computer programming, that's what Knuth writes.Norman Maclean wrote:
The problem isn't (necessarily) understanding it. The problem is using it. Translating from assembler, even MIX, to a high level language takes a significant amount of time.
OTOH, most algorithm books seem to be written for college classes. You get to the part of the algorithm that takes a bit of time and effort to get right and "this is left as an exercise". What I want, and haven't found, is a good reference book. TAOCP was such at a time when bits were expensive, and time was cheap. Things have reversed since then. But nobody has written the book, because textbooks have a reliable market.
I'm not sure that I'd buy an algorithm book if they stuffed everything on some machine readable medium, either. Those things tend to go bad, and to go missing. Just recently I was trying to get a good presentation of red-black trees for C++. There was a data structures for C++ book on my shelf, but when I took it down, the floppy was blank. And I didn't even look for that until after I had read the section on Red-Black trees, and when I got to the part I needed, it said to look on the attached floppy. CD's aren't necessarily any better, they scratch and become unreadable. And with DVD's you are depending on the "good-will" of a publisher. Ask an author about that one. So I want it all on paper, where I can see it. But TAOCP isn't right for a reference book.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Ask google about using true type fonts in *nix. There beautyful ^_^
You are allowed to make backups, you know. Besides, space is cheap, so you should just copy those things to your hard drive. That way they're at hand when you need them, and they get backed up with the rest of your system.
I'd also point out that Knuth's books provides all of the equations and the mathematical basis needed to write the code - that's the point of the books. MIX is simply used to provide illustrative examples. Thinking that all you need to do is to recode MIX to another language misses the point - you need to really understand what it is that you are doing when writing such code. And you are right - it takes time to write good code. Which is why you and the vast majority of programmers use and rely upon pre-written ("canned") routines and components. There is certainly nothing wrong with this - just as long the implications are understood. This is why "low-level" references such as the Knuth books are becoming less and less relevant to most working programmers today (not irrelevant, just less needed).
Is this IV related to that IV?
Do I play Hockey?
What you say!!
- The Art of Computer Programming for Dummies.
- The Art of Computer Programming: From the Ground Up. (with Herbert Shildt)
- MAXIMUM STRENGTH! TAOCP
Seriously, though. Thank you, Doctor, for taking the time to get it right.Yeah dude, show a little respect. Knuth's powers of procrastination are utterly unrivaled.
I do developement in both Windows and Linux in C, Perl, VB, and Java. I have been programming on various systems from childhood, but I am self tought. I have picked up Knuth and I find the math a bit intimidating. I never remember having to study in math class in high school, but ihas been about 5 years sinse I have really studied. Can anyone point me at a good reference to get up to speed on the kind of math encountered in this series? I am very, very interested in learning, but I am not sure where to start. I have your basic advanced high school math background. Any suggestions?
I'd recommend reading Abelson and Sussman. In their textbook, they seem to manage just fine describing and implementing concepts like co-routines and lexical scoping using Lambda-calculus.
These days with wizards and even libraries the average "programmer" can't really program, all they do is paste a bunch of stuff together.
I would say that less than 1% of today's programmers could do the hard core stuff like design an efficient file storage system or a compiler.
-- Welcome to nowhere fast / nothing here ever lasts.
Given the basic nature of most of the alogorithms in his books, shouldn't GNU or someone collect them into freely available GNU or public domain libraries along with theory/explanation of how each algorithm works?
The thing I like about just about any Knuth book is that I can pick it up when I have a spare five minutes, flick to a random page, and learn something interesting and non-trivial. It's the same with Introduction To Algorithms -- another non-trivial but not obscure textbook.
(good choice of book with Elementary Number Theory, by the way -- by Burton? That's the book that got me interested in number theory when I was 16)
Knuth's books are good. They also take a lot of time to use. If you are designing an algorithm that covers a new area, then they are the right tool. But most work is done within known territory.
The real problem is that I have found NO decent reference book on algorithms. Sedgewick is fair, but it is clearly MUCH more of a textbook than a reference book for a professional. A reference book doesn't leave out the curcial pieces with a cute note saying "the missing part is left as an exercise". That is quite annoying when one is trying to get something done, and just wants to use a well-understood tool. Engineers don't redesign their screwdrivers with every new project, why should programmers be expected to?
If I want to use a particular data structure, then you may be fairly well assured that I have some decent reason for wanting to use, say, a Red-Black tree instead of a Hash on the Heap. It would be much easier to use a hash. There's built in language support. But the Red-Black tree is a better match to the problem. So the nlangedd "reference" books don't give you complete algorithms.
TEACHER! Bitter teacher. I don't like doing make work, teacher. I want to get on with things.
Now it's true that the failures I cited don't really apply to TAOCP. Not that much. But it is quite difficult to use, and to translate an implementation. It can more than double the cost of choosing a particular tool (over what an appropriate reference book would cost).
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
and is there a way to save diagrams and expressions using latex2html
Simple. I opened up my cygwin client and typed
$ gunzip fasc2a.ps.gz
And it gave me an error message; At that point, I renamed the file and opened it up in Ghostview.
however, Proust wrote in French, so...
oh, and on the subject of Knuth, his work was important back in the day, but it is somewhat less relevant today. Look at the computer science curriculums (sorry, I don't know latin) at the top schools and you will see Knuth as an optional additional reference in the algorithms class. But algorithms, while important, is not even a required core subject for a CS major.
> Open sourcing the books
Give me a fucking break, kid...
Repeat after me: "nowhere close to being a silver
bullet", *especially* in this case...
> I think the majority of you know what I'm
> leading to.
Shortly followed by a loud bleating of sheep...
yes, you're right. but to "goto" where Dijkstra should have gone in his piece you need to JMP to Lambda, the Ultimate Goto. I hope the insight is as simple as just reading it, but I fear that tail-recursion (no, not the compiler optimization by that name) may be something you need to experience to grasp. Not that difficult, but it challenges the older way of thinking.
I'm not sure how old mr. knuth is but I hope he's able to complete his task. I admire greatly his project. the way that the science of computing advances faster than any other science would seem to make something like this nearly impossible. as it is Mr. knuth already has plans to go back over the previous volumes to update them for new technology. eventually you approach a point where anything you write down is obsolete the next day. even with something as fundamental as the algorithyms he describes is in need of update.
This leads me to think about what might happen once knuth has passed on. I'm in no hurry for him to die mind you but the text are more important or he wouldn't bother devoting so much of his life to them. something like this begs to be continued beyond the author. I think the majority of you know what I'm leading to. Open sourcing the books once mr knuth is no longer able to maintain them, I'm not trying to be greedy. I would eagerly pay for them (once I feel I'm at a level where I felt i had a chance of understanding them) I'm only worried that unlike the other works described on Mr knuths page (einstein and relativity, feynman and QED, etc...) TAOCP would quickly become useless to future generations. I don't think I, or mr knuth, or anyone else here would like that to happen.
-
"IMHO, if you haven't read Knuth's work, you aren't a programmer."
There are plenty of people out there who've read (and even understood) Knuth's books, yet who still write horrible spaghetti code. This includes at least 50% of the mathematics PhD's who have worked for me over the years. I would barely classify these people as programmers.
At the same time, I have seen plenty of good (even "very good") software engineers who have never even seen Knuth's books.
TAOCP (esp. vol I) is important, I would even agree with you that aspiring programmers "should" read it, but IMHO the knowledge is neither sufficient nor entirely necessary for making good programmers.
I think this expresses wonderfully the difference between the mechanic and the engineer. The mechanic knows how to use his tools, and knows what is relevant to the problem at hand; or he is helpless. Unlike the mechanic, the engineer can adapt his very general knowlege to new problems.
Most people don't want to be able to cope with the unfamiliar; it's uncertain, uncomfortable, and sometimes hard. Most folks prefer not to be asked, and thus not to be capable.
Given all that, it makes sense that some coders see no real need for TAOCP. It is math and general tools for thinking, rather than a Chilton's manual for programming application XYZ. It would take decades to fully understand the most of TAOCP, and most folks want to just get their tickets punched and get a job so they can stop making a pretense of learning.
The cake is a pie
You win a prize for the 401,302th mispelling of "loser" on the internet today.
You can collect your prize in hell.
Hopefully it won't be as disappointing as another Trilogy extension that we all know and have come to despise.
Careful. There's a damn fine extended trilogy most of us know and love, written by Douglas Adams.
Now if Knuth told us that he'd originally conceieved the 4th book before the first 3, or that he was getting special effects or merchandising consults to work with him, well, yes, then it would be time to worry...
This is a popular view, but I think it's at least partially wrong; the idea that high-level algorythms are easier than low-level ones. Nothing is easier than building abstract, efficient black boxes into a global system that doesn't scale.
Distills fine here... (Acrobat 4). Distill Time: 31 seconds (00:00:31) **** End of Job ****
Too bad about the bitmap fonts... yieech!
Ok, looks like Knuth is only 62 or 63. Sorry Professor Knuth
Everbody knows 2^10 is 1000
I think hard drive manufacturers have attempted to make that statement true. They ditched the 1024 multiples in favor of 1000 so that their hard drives would seem bigger. You may buy a 20GB hard drive, your OS ends up telling you that it's only around 18GB.
another trilogy extension
Ursula le Guin's Earthsea trilogy ?
(if you're the age I am, and read the first three long ago, then go and find the more recent fourth book - very different, and well worth the read)
TAOCP is a 7 volume set - always has been. He just took his time getting around to >3.
OTOH, Trilogy (capitalised) and CML should be burnt at the stake. 8-(
Winzip just opens it and asks what kind of files I want to add to the archive!?!?
Winzip is slightly confused here. IE, the browswer that you saved the file, uncompressed the file on the fly, but retained the extension.
Simply renaming the file from fasc2a.ps.gz to fasc2a.ps will fascilitate viewing, presuming you do have a Postscript viewer on your system.
(if you don't get GSview)
The acrobat distiller will convert postscript files to pdf files. Additionally, you might already have psview (I think it's called that). Adobe ships it as a postscript viewer.
Try PowerArchiver:
http://www.powerarchiver.com/
Ask your average Windows programmer about Donald Knuth. Then, ask your average Unix/Linux programmer about Donald Knuth. I think you will notice an interesting pattern emerge. IMHO, if you haven't read Knuth's work, you aren't a programmer.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
text? Text? You want ascii text? My God, you are a heretic. Here's an author who essentially took a multi year sabattical to write a absolutely beautiful type system--TeX-- and here you are, asking if there's a text version...
Well, I suppose that technically you could be asking for TeX source-- but then you'd be missing the elaborate postscript drawings that pepper the piece. (Since TeX is for the most part error free, MikTex should not cause any typographical errors..., but you never know.)
> Please upgrade to an OS that is for adult use.
OS XXX?
Try GSView + GhostScript. GhostScript is an open source PostScript interpreter. GSView is a (shareware) GUI for GhostScript. Both are available on Windows and Linux.
Good luck getting what you want. I know I can get what I need on the topics covered in V1-3 that I just can't get in other texts I try. It won't hand-hold you, telling you to do this, then this, and if this do that, but instead gets you going in the right direction. {Dumass}
Everbody knows 2^10 is 1000, and pi is 3.
- Abelson and Sussman: Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs. This book covers a lot of ground when it comes to programming, implementation of programming languages, and the use of abstraction in software development.
- Cormen, Leiserson, and Rivest's algorithm book is an excellent modern exposition of algorithms and concepts in algorithm development.
- Russel and Norvig's "AI -- A Modern Approach" is an excellent textbook covering logic, search, and AI.
Also very relevant to modern computer science are the following books:- Duda, Hart, and Stork's "Pattern Classification" is also a book computer scientists should know, but rarely do.
- Strang's "Introduction to Applied Mathematics" covers elementary material in applied math that every scientist (computer or otherwise) should know by heart.
- Gershenfeld's "The Nature of Mathematical Modeling" is a neat, if somewhat quirky, book at the intersection of mathematical modeling and computer science.
If you have recommendations of other introductory books with a similar style, say on automata theory, string algorithms, number theory, combinatorics, etc., please do share them.Many of us think that the persons who figure how to solve some problem first (or better than anyone before them) are entitled to manage the discovery and protect the know-how involved (i.e. the intellectual property) any way they consider appropriate.
Then many of you need to wake up. The "authority to manage the discovery" is NOTHING like an entitlement. It is ONLY there because most of the greedy bastards in the world wouldn't even remotely cooperate with anyone--if they try to research new ideas at all. In fact, look any where where there is not legal protection, and you'll see what people believe about inventions. Take graduate students for example, they are only barely getting some semblance of rights. You still see about all of student work subsumed under professors, but at sometimes they often get their names on the paper (somewhere, in small print :), even if they won't see any kind of real benefit/grant/prestige from their work.
As for software patents, no I'd not give them an inch of credibility. There's hardly one really good general-audience commercial program out there NOW. Maybe when there's two or three of something commercial, then we can talk about who gets credit for the advances involved. In other words, there is WAAAAY too much room for people to work and compete without even diddling around with software patent issues. Plus, you've mixed up issues a bit. Copyrtight law is what allows people to choose the GPL or assign rights--NOT patent law.
And yes, the aggregation and advance is most important, but remember a patent should ONLY go on something not obvious to an EXPERT IN THAT FIELD. I would extend that to say a patent is only valid WHILE it is not obvious to an expert. Then maybe software patents and other such artifices would have some useful--and plausible--meaning.
I would really really like to see a text that treats algorithms such as markov chain monte carlo, simulated annealing, evolutionary algorithms, genetic algorithms, etc. in one volume. They all seem related in some way, and it would be nice to see a book treat them all comprehensively in a way that is still useful for application. Does anyone know of such a text? I guess maybe it's better to buy separate texts on each topic.
You can use Ghostview to open ps files. Both in Windows and Linux. KDE also has a PS/PDF viewer of its own. Linux has ps2pdf to convert from ps to pdf. Dunno about a Windows version. --Chandru.
I think the finder's fee in the older versions of the books is only a dollar (decimal). But I could easily be wrong.
Man, all this time I thought volume 4 was an urban legend.
Winzip just opens it and asks what kind of files I want to add to the archive!?!?
There an html or pdf or gasp text version floating around anywhere?
*wonders why you need to gzip files when apache's mod_gzip does it for you* =)
Yes, I run win98 at work
Yes, I'm lame when it comes to text formatting. I am a PDF/RTF/Word (yuck)/ASCII kind of guy.
Can someone please advise me as to either one of the following? Thanks in advance.
I own The Art of Computer Programming vols. I, II, and III. I bought the first two back in 1987 while attending the university; the third I bought two years ago. I fondly remember saving my pennies to buy the first two; I can't wait to have a look at IV.
Cheers!
Ehttp://eugeneciurana.com | http://ciurana.eu
Remove the .gz extension. The remaining .ps file will open cleanly with GhostView/GhostScript under Win 98.
It's the respective version numbers for those programs that are converging to pi and e (and, as DK has decreed, will reach those values upon his death).
The error-finder's fee, as I understand, is not bounded in any way-- save for The Knuth's ability to walk the walk of a perfectionist };-)
iSKUNK!
If they're only paying for typos, nevermind.
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
how many assembly style languages, a la MIX (or the RISC based MMIX) have a while loop structure? On a fundamental level, GOTOs or jump instructions are neccessary. Granted, utilizing them in a high level OO language is no good. But to truly understand and see the algorithm just a couple of steps above the machine.. they simply must be there...
but 4th is just 65 pages! I can do it! I can!
Knuth's books are timeless. Java, C++, C, Fortran... it's all pretty irrelevant. If you spend some time with Knuth's books it reduces the rest of the books on programming to piddly details that need little time.
and the $2.56 finder's fee for every typo is still there
So if CmdrTaco wrote it, we would all be rich.
How do I read the .gz file? I tried using Winzip 8.0, but got the message
Then I found www.gzip.org and downloaded the Win98 executables. But I can't seem to get them working on my computer. Moreover, the documenation says explicitly that Winzip handles allThen I downloaded win-gz and ran it. Win-gz claimed that the file (fasc2a.ps.gz) was not gzipped and refused to unzip it.
Thinking that the file might have somehow become corrupted on download, I downloaded the file a second time. The results were the same.
Does another Win98 user have constructive suggestions for gunzipping?
I think it's cool that he has such long-range plans.
I agree with the comment about gotos. I didn't really understand many of those algorithms until I translated them to more conventionally structured code.
Knuth's TAOCP has amazing depth of the subjects it covers, but it's a harder read than it has to be. Lets start with the decsion to use abstract assembly instead of psudocode or a C like language. It would also be nice to have more explaination and background reguarding the problems list, partularly the more difficult and unsolved ones.
I would love to see someone publish a reader's guide to TAOCP to help more programmers get more out of this great treasure. Like the Reader's Guide to Keynes' General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money has helped economics students understand a similar masterpiece in their field.
Programmers should be able to understand the material, but a tall glass of water makes the pill a lot easier to swallow.
Henry Fnord
Speaking of Caltech, I was there in the 60's as an undergrad and had Knuth as my instructor in Math 5 (Group Theory). I was also a waiter in the Athaneum (faculty club) and served him many a meal, as he often ate there on the weekends. My fondest memory, however, is that whenever I was walking around the campus late at night (there isn't much else to do in Pasadena), one light in Sloan (the math building) was ALWAYS on. Turns out it was Knuth's office. I wondered what he was up to. When Vol. I came out a few years later, I knew. dave shields IBM Research Jikes co-author
You are thinking of the version numbers, not the bug finders fee.
"It's overkill, of course. But you can never have too much overkill." - Anonymous Slashdot Coward
Knuth will be well over a hundred when volume 7 is published
And you don't wish him long life and good health?
So, what's the finder's fee converging to? TeX was heading for pi, METAFONT for e...
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Then he goes on to explain what volumes 6 and 7 will be about.
Isn't Knuth already in his 70's? If volume 5 isn't going to be out until 2009, then Knuth will be well over a hundred when volume 7 is published.
Danny.
I have written over 900 book reviews
(and the $2.56 finder's fee for every typo is still there :)."
Man! I wish that was availiable for Slashdot.. I'd be rich!
air and light and time and space
It's sad, really. Knuth has so much to teach us, if he would only deign to speak comprehensibly.
However I still wait to see someone who had time to work through all three existing volumes, and completed the tackable exercises.
So as a course for computer science, I think this series is a failure, as it covers simply too much. Perhaps one should regard it more as a encyclopedia.
Greetings!
/.-ting.
I learned more this afternoon about PostScript, Ghostview, Paint Shop Pro, Photoshop and Acrobat than in the last two years. I appreciate your comments and suggestions.
I used Distiller to convert the document. It was the easiest thing to do. I always wondered what the little "Distiller" icon did besides vectorizing my fonts; now I know.
Thanks again to all, and happy
E
http://eugeneciurana.com | http://ciurana.eu
I assume it will be available as a MS-Word doc. After all, he just loves those True-Type Fonts!
This is not a draft of volume IV. This is a draft of a section of one chapter in volume IV, namely section 7.2.1.1.
Dr. Knuth writes: "This is a section of a long, long chapter on combinatorial algorithms. Chapter 7 will eventually fill three volumes (namely Volumes 4A, 4B and 4C), assuming that I'm able to remain healthy."
This particular section deals with generation of combinatorial patterns and was released for public review in hope to winnow the most egregious errors before it's released; the subject is so extense that Dr. Knuth felt this was one of the best ways to improve this 67-page section.
I've read the first four or five pages and it's impressive, as always. Heavy on the math from the first page. Either way this will make for very enjoyable reading (if you're in hyper-nerd mode).
Cheers!
E
http://eugeneciurana.com | http://ciurana.eu
I code for a living. Knuth speaks a different language - some martian mathematical language. His books make me think I am dumb. Maybe one day his computer should meet my computer.
Pretty damn gutsy thing to offer. Imagine if there'd been 30 errors...
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
I disagree with this point of view.
Khalid wrote: "Knuth books are the material proof that software patents are stupid."
All the basics can be found in his works, agreed. But implementing products, whether in software or hardware, involves aggregation of this knowledge into a useful form.
Remember: Knowing the periodic table and the properties of chemicals isn't enough; products such as plastics or drugs are the result of aggregating the compounds and combining them through experimentation and know-how (i.e. the art part). In the case of software, knowing algorithms and programming languages doesn't result in a new product or way of solving a software problem. This product or service only has value to *anyone* if the application of algorithms and programming skills results in solving a problem.
Many of us think that the persons who figure how to solve some problem first (or better than anyone before them) are entitled to manage the discovery and protect the know-how involved (i.e. the intellectual property) any way they consider appropriate.
This freedom of choice is what allows some of us to produce code and licence it under the GPL, or the Apache licence, or patent it, or copyright it, or assign it to a third party, or whatever.
I tend to agree that most (perhaps all?) business methods and quite a few service patents are stupid. I don't agree when it comes to software. Then, I am primarily a technologist and make my living creating software products. If I were a business person I'd may have a more informed opinion of their stance on patents.
Cheers!
E
http://eugeneciurana.com | http://ciurana.eu
Yep. Between Paint Shop Pro for imaging and ABBYY FineReader for .PDF capture, I don't see how Adobe stays in business.
Full version Photoshop (designed for professional work) costs $600; Photoshop eLEments (designed for hobbyist and web use; lacks PANTONE support) costs only $100. GIMP and GIMP for Windows, on the other hand, compare to PSLE and Paint Shop Pro and cost only $2.50 from your friend with DSL for the blank CD, wear on the burner, bandwidth, and eir[0] time.
Kontour (the Illustrator replacement) just isn't that well known and doesn't run on Windows yet (although Cygwin+XFree86 could in theory run KDE), and I haven't seen any printers running a Ghostscript engine.
[0] 'eir' is a gender-neutral Spivak pronoun[?].
Will I retire or break 10K?
I am so happy to see new books being written about the Forth programming language, and by Knuth no less!
I was begining to worry that Forth was a dead language.
(Score:-1, Really Bad Pun)
MMIX is a 64bit VM instruction set and is as good an abstact machine as any other. We don't need garbage collection built into the op codes as the JVM and .NET VM has. We just need a uniform virtual machine in which we can target gcc's code so we can run the code on any machine. There is already a port to Knuth's MMIX already in GCC. Does anyone know of a VM that jits MMIX?
I've been following the saga of volume 4 for twenty years or so now. In the early 1980s I got a math degree at Caltech, and during my stay there I developed a deep love of combinatorics and combinatorial algorithms that stays with me to this day.
I even had the opportunity to ask Knuth (who gave a talk there circa 1983) about volume 4, and it was clear that he hadn't given up on eventually returning to TAOCP.
The Knuth books have always had a treasured place on my bookshelf, but I never stopped hoping that I might someday see Volume 4. Yes, yes, it's only the first fascile. I've known about the fascile plan for the last few years, but it's still something quite different to see the first one. On my screen. Not next millineum, not next year, not next month or week or day, now.
*sniff* It's enough to almost make a geek cry.
--j
I'm a nature photographer.
It's been a long wait since the first three book of TAOCP came out (in the 80's I suppose). Knuth said it would be a 7-volume series. We always wait for the rest to come out. Here's volume 4. You could check out what will come out for volume 5-7. The contents for volume 4 is there too (including the erratas of vol 1-3).
He said that he'll spend his retirement to write the rest. Wow. Check out his homepage, probably you could help him. If you could give him a "significant suggestion", he'll reward you for 32c. If only ask slashdot offer the same prize for each highly modded post. :-)
Caveat emptor: His book is not for the faint-hearted. It's full of math & logic -- but it's wonderful.
--
Error 500: Internal sig error
My fault-- according to this article Jeff Oldham is converting most of the old illustrations into MetaPost. Anyway, the technical challenges involved in "compiling from source" (so to speak) TAOCP are probably enormous.
The fact of the matter is that what constitutes programming today and who is considered a "programmer" has changed significantly since Don Knuth published his first encyclopedic volume in this ongoing series. At that time most programmers really were extremely knowledgeable about mathematics - programming degrees usually involved equal amounts of advanced math and programming. The Knuth volumes were practically bibles for programmers. I suspect that Knuth may have thought that you could actually distill all of the core knowledge required for programming into such a set of reference books. Just as technology has rapidly changed since that era so has programming. A single reference book on algorithms such as Introduction to Algorithms by T. H. Cormen et al. is more than sufficient for most programmers today - more likely even overkill. I can't help but think that few programmers today (say under the age of 30) would really understand much less truly appreciate Knuth's work - it simply isn't relevant for them. This isn't "good" or "bad" but reflects the changed nature of programming. Ask how many programmers today write low level subroutines to perform sorting etc. versus using an existing pre-written package or software component? Yeah, maybe it is good to know this stuff in Knuth's books but given the rush of other skills/techniques/methods to learn it simply isn't as crucial any more.
Black hat Knuth! Woo hoo... I mena W00 H00!
Knuth's volumes probably should be on your bookshelf. But for learning about algorithms, I think you are better served with a more modern textbook, which focuses on teaching techniques and approaches. And for any particular specialty (string matching, combinatorial algorithms, etc.), there are also lots of books that are more relevant and more complete.
At the end of the preface ("page -4"):
... (And if you find an better solution to an exercise...
;).
:).
Cha-ching! I hope whoever gets the $2.56 invests it wisely
Knuth came to speak at my school (the University of Waterloo Pascal lecture series) last year; he was a very interesting speaker and fielded questions quite capably. It wasn't a computer science talk per se, but was very interesting... my idea of a really big number from now on will be "super-K"
- czth
is it available in any other formats beyond postscript?
thanks.
Lack of eloquence does not denote lack of intelligence, though they often coincide.
Most people forget that the Jewish people and the Palestinian people are actually the same people; at some point eons ago a group of jews broke away from the "pure" jewish religion and gradually through the ages islam came to be. The Jewish shunned them, naturally.
P2P Anonymous Distributed Web Search: http://www.yacy.net/