Slashdot Mirror
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.
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!
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 eventually you approach a point where anything you write down is obsolete the next day.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.
-
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.
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
It's sad, really. Knuth has so much to teach us, if he would only deign to speak comprehensibly.
Anyhow, this all totally ignores the rest of the world's religions, most of whom are less warlike (and hopefully more apropos for the naming of geek books).
Does this mean TeX is the Apocrypha?
Don ain't exactly Picasso, but I'll bet that his signature would fetch more than $2.56 on ebay, paticularly if it was on one of his famous hexadecimal checks...
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
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?
Probably does have a lot to do with age. Yet, to throw a curve at you, I'm 16 and have volumes 1, 2, and 3 and Concrete Mathematics. The funny thing about Knuth is because his work is so mathematically intensive, he gets quoted by people in the math field as much as he does by people in the computer field. I've seen bibliographical references to him on www.cut-the-knot.com and in a book I have called Elementary Number Theory. Paraphrasing the latter, it said, regarding Euclid's GCF algorithm, "For a detailed analysis see Knuth (1968)." I don't know if it's just me but I really got a kick out of that. His books just have so much stuff that you can just pull out and fool around with. Last year when I was a sophmore, a senior and I spent roughly two weeks just researching floor theory (not kidding you. As in floor/ceiling) and it was amazing how interesting it could get and how much Knuth has contributed to what seemingly is a trivial topic. (See Concrete Mathematics Pages 67 - 101 for stuff pretty much just on floor/ceiling). Now that I've successfully gone off on a tangent, I'll just say "yes" to your comment.
"Nature doesn't care how smart you are. You can still be wrong." - Richard Feynman