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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.
I've heard a wonderful Picasso story, but I don't know if it's true, or just a story.
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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 eventually you approach a point where anything you write down is obsolete the next day.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.
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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.
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...
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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?