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Comment by macintux | Hacker News Reader

I had not realized there’s now an estimated release date for 4B of this October. I think it may finally be time (after 4B) to buy the box set and leave it lying around in hopes that by 2030 I’ll get up the courage to start it.

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You don't have to read them linearly. Volume 2 (Seminumerical Algorithms) starts with an awesome discussion of random number sequences. I think all programmers who use random number generators could benefit from reading it. You can just pick and choose other topics throughout the series.

Also, used copies can be really cheap. Some of the volumes in my back up set were just $20 each, and in excellent condition. Apparently lots of people buy the books and never read them :)

I finaly had an opportunity to use my box this year for an interview step which was a home challenge. It was about debugging a flowed code to return all valid anagrams of a word according to /usr/share/dict and then propose optimizations. The fix was easy, and after implementing my own ideas, I searched for other approaches online as I might usually do. And only after that I had the idea to look at my TAOC box. And I did find some pertaining material. Not something I would usually do at various positions I had until now, where the shelf, if any, would only contains books on the frameworks, languages and tools used by the team. And when going back to home, there are plenty of other things to do.

Anyway, this helped me I think to go through this step of the recruitment process. My application went through the whole process, and didn't lead to a hire, but I really enjoyed it.

Now in the meantime I got a new job mostly on full remote, so maybe I might take the habit to reach my shelve for TAOCP more often.

I already tried a linear reading starting with volume one, but honestly it's not my favorite prose to go through like that alone. Knowing that you'll be given solutions in the out of date MIX, waiting for an MMIX covered edition come out, plus you might better first go through Concrete Math first, and so on, that is a lot of material to climb. The view up there might be wonderful, but finding the time and attention required can be a great challenge per itself.

Worth noting: there’s currently a discount available via a code displayed prominently on the Pearson site, so preordering it came to about $210 USD for me.

https://www.informit.com/store/art-of-computer-programming-v...

I bought it, got stuck on the maths in chapter 1 of volume 1, and it's now in my friends Attic in another country. Maybe one day! But not yet.

just skip ahead!

This is such great advice at least for reading mathematics, and I assume for reading most science. Skip the introductory part you don't understand, which is almost certainly explanatory throat-clearing, and get to the part that interests you. Now you won't understand it! But you'll see the reason you don't understand it, and you can go back to the introduction with the mission specifically of understanding that part. It is consistently amazing to me how the same sentence that was baffling when you had no context in which to put it becomes enlightening when you have a problem to which to apply it.

(That is also, if I may air a personal pet peeve here, why, though I am always delighted to see people understanding a concept, I get defensive as a teacher when later-life learners say "why didn't my teacher just say that?" Because the answer is often some combination of (1) even if they had said that exact thing, it wouldn't have reached you then, because you weren't then in the head space that you are now; and (2) they probably did say that, or something like it, and, because of (1), it seemed so far from relevant that you don't even remember it.)

I also am a teacher and I also find that exact thing is true.

I think it at least party accounts for second book syndrome, where someone asks the Internet, "Hey, I'm having trouble with Calc I, can someone recommend a good text?" and people in all seriousness suggest Spivak, or Rudin. "I also didn't understand it until I did Rudin" they'll say, having overlooked your point that headspace changes over time.

> people in all seriousness suggest Spivak, or Rudin

What's wrong with them?

> > people in all seriousness suggest Spivak, or Rudin

> What's wrong with them?

They are excellent books in their own right, and can be excellent books for mathematically mature students looking for a mathematically mature perspective, but their likelihood of serving well someone who is struggling with an introductory calculus course is, I would suspect, vanishingly small.

They make great bathroom books; open at random and you're likely to find something interesting. Also confuses guests.

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