The Art of Computer Programming, Volumes 1-4A Boxed Set Author: Donald E. Knuth | Language: English | ISBN:
0321751043 | Format: PDF
The Art of Computer Programming, Volumes 1-4A Boxed Set Description
The bible of all fundamental algorithms and the work that taught many of today’s software developers most of what they know about computer programming.
—Byte, September 1995
Countless readers have spoken about the profound personal influence of Knuth’s work. Scientists have marveled at the beauty and elegance of his analysis, while ordinary programmers have successfully applied his “cookbook” solutions to their day-to-day problems. All have admired Knuth for the breadth, clarity, accuracy, and good humor found in his books.
I can’t begin to tell you how many pleasurable hours of study and recreation they have afforded me! I have pored over them in cars, restaurants, at work, at home… and even at a Little League game when my son wasn’t in the line-up.
—Charles Long
Primarily written as a reference, some people have nevertheless found it possible and interesting to read each volume from beginning to end. A programmer in China even compared the experience to reading a poem.
If you think you’re a really good programmer… read [Knuth’s] Art of Computer Programming… You should definitely send me a résumé if you can read the whole thing.
—Bill Gates
Whatever your background, if you need to do any serious computer programming, you will find your own good reason to make each volume in this series a readily accessible part of your scholarly or professional library.
It’s always a pleasure when a problem is hard enough that you have to get the Knuths off the shelf. I find that merely opening one has a very useful terrorizing effect on computers.
—Jonathan Laventhol
In describing the new fourth volume, one reviewer listed the qualities that distinguish all of Knuth’s work.
[In sum:] detailed coverage of the basics, illustrated with well-chosen examples; occasional forays into more esoteric topics and problems at the frontiers of research; impeccable writing peppered with occasional bits of humor; extensive collections of exercises, all with solutions or helpful hints; a careful attention to history; implementations of many of the algorithms in his classic step-by-step form.
—Frank Ruskey
These four books comprise what easily could be the most important set of information on any serious programmer’s bookshelf.
- Hardcover: 3168 pages
- Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional; 1 edition (March 3, 2011)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0321751043
- ISBN-13: 978-0321751041
- Product Dimensions: 10.5 x 7.1 x 7.2 inches
- Shipping Weight: 12.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Since receipt of volume 4A two days ago, I have been dipping into this and that topic via the indexes ...
What an excellent authoritive masterful survey - up to 2011 - of combinatorial exhaustive search techniques ...
And, some focus on application to business usable sorting and searching techniques ...
Excellent and comprehensive chapter on bitwise tips and techniques, and all sorts of other obscure techniques such as resolution and radix sorting that may not be obvious to information systems graduates who don't have to study algorithms in depth.
(Must confess I've seen earlier editions of volumes 1 to 3 before!)
Donald Knuth is not averse to explaining some things in terms of history or heuristic ... the only heuristic explanation I'm familiar with he doesn't raise are the ones based on the laws of thermodynamics. There is this argument that to understand sorting algorithms one must consider the entrophy gains and losses as the system becomes more ordered and the consequent radiated heat somewhere else in the universe. The related argument from nuclear cell division DNA replication - in science fiction called sometimes the life force - is that when one duplicates information there is a consequent 'life force' heat side effect from the physical law of the conservation of information in quantum mechanics equations. The heuristic explanation then is that if we can minimise the heat from the sorting, we'll have found the best sorting algorithm. Now quicksort wastes more fractions of distinguishment than multi-pass-N-way merge sorting in theory ... so there is more tiny fractions of wasted bits caused by the comparisions.
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