The Art of Computer Programming
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The Art of Computer Programming[1] is a comprehensive monograph written by Donald Knuth that covers many kinds of programming algorithms and their analysis. Knuth began the project, which was originally planned to be one book, in 1962. The first three volumes were published in rapid succession, starting with volume 1 in 1968, volume 2 in 1969, and volume 3 in 1973. The first installment of Volume 4 was published in February 2005. Additional installments are planned approximately twice per year with a break before fascicle 5 to finish the "Selected Papers" series.
Contents
[edit] History
Considered an expert at writing compilers, Knuth started to write a book about compiler design in 1962. He soon realized that the scope of the book needed to be much larger. In June 1965, Knuth finished the first draft of what was originally planned to be a single volume of twelve chapters. This hand-written manuscript was 3,000 pages long. Knuth had assumed that about five hand-written pages would translate into one printed page. The publisher said that it was actually about 1½ hand-written pages to one printed page: thus the book would be 2,000 pages in length. The plan of the book was changed to have seven volumes, each with one or two chapters. Due to the growth in the material, the plan for Volume 4 has since expanded to include Volumes 4A, 4B, 4C, and possibly 4D. Volume 4A is likely to split further, since 7.1 and 7.2.1 together are already over 650 pages.
In 1976, Knuth prepared a second edition of Volume 2, requiring it to be typeset again. But the style of type (called hot type) used in the first edition was no longer available. So, in 1977, he decided to spend a few months working up something more suitable. Eight years later, he returned with TeX, which is currently used for all volumes.
The famous offer of a reward check worth "one hexadecimal dollar" (0x100 cents, in Base 16, is $2.56) for any errors found, and the correction of these errors in subsequent printings, has contributed to the highly polished and continued authoritative nature of the work, long after its first publication. Another characteristic of the volumes is the variation in the difficulty of the exercises. The level of difficulty ranges from "warm-up" exercises to unsolved research problems, giving any reader a challenge. Knuth's dedication is also famous:
to the Type 650 computer once installed at
Case Institute of Technology,
in remembrance of many pleasant evenings. â€
[edit] Assembly language in the book
All examples in the books use a language called "MIX assembly language", which runs on the hypothetical MIX computer. (Currently, the MIX computer is being replaced by the MMIX computer, which is a RISC version.) Software such as GNU MDK exists to provide emulation of the MIX architecture.
Some readers are put off by the use of assembly language, but Knuth considers this necessary because algorithms need a context to judge speed and memory usage. It does, however, limit the accessibility of the book to many readers, and limits its usefulness as a "cookbook" for practicing programmers, many of whom are not familiar with assembly, and even if they are, have no particular desire to translate assembly code into a high-level language. A number of more accessible algorithms textbooks using high-level language examples exist and are popular for precisely these reasons.
[edit] Critical response
American Scientist has included this work among the best twelve physical-science monographs of the twentieth century,[2] and within the computer science community it is regarded as the first and still the best comprehensive treatment of its subject. Covers of the third edition of Volume 1 quote Bill Gates as saying, "If you think you're a really good programmer […] read (Knuth's) Art of Computer Programming […] You should definitely send me a resume if you can read the whole thing." (According to folklore, Steve Jobs made this claim.[3])
[edit] Chapter outline
[edit] Outline of Volume 4A Enumeration and Backtracking
[edit] Outline of Volume 4B Graph and Network Algorithms
[edit] Outline of Volumes 4C and 4D Optimization and Recursion
[edit] English editions
[edit] Current editions
In order by volume number:
[edit] Previous editions
In order by publication date:
