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Comment by coreyp_1 | Hacker News Reader

This is one of those book series that I really, really want to purchase as a beautiful, matching, leather-bound set. And, yes, I would read it for pleasure, and I would treasure it.

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Each volume is taking longer and longer (4A and 4B and work on 4C have taken over 20 years). Mr Knuth is 84 and if there are 3 more volumes...

Maybe Brandon Sanderson can write the last three books.

Never heard of him, is he another great computer scientist?

I'd love it if someone like Chris Wellons or Per Bothner could work on them, but filling Knuth's shoes may be a big task for one man.

No, he's a fantasy author who finished the last few volumes of a popular epic fantasy series after its original author died.

Also convinced he writes in his sleep with the amount of books he releases.

He got a little bored during COVID and accidentally wrote 5 books: https://youtu.be/6a-k6eaT-jQ this led to what I think is the most funded Kickstarter ever: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dragonsteel/surprise-fo...

https://www.theverge.com/c/23194235/ai-fiction-writing-amazo...

I'm flattered, but have no idea where that came from. While I have implemented some interesting data structures and algorithms in my time, I don't consider myself a "Computer Scientist" or algorithms expert. However, I did work with Knuth in the 1980s, and am in a group photo in his "Digital Typography" book. I agree with all the nice things people have said about him.

Well played

Journey before destination

The joke, for anyone else here who isn't a book nerd (my wife is), is that now whenever an old author dies with unfinished work, or hasn't finished their work (that's you, George!) people make a joke "Just let Brandon Sanderson finish it!" because Mr. Sanderson is an absolute writing beast, he's a "100x writer" if there ever was one and he is working on (or finished?) a book series[0] by a now-dead author and most people think he made it better.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wheel_of_Time

I was thinking the same thing when I clicked on the comments. I somewhat expect this will be the last volume in the series, so one could now hope to buy a "complete" set. I would love to revisit and explore all of the material using modern programming languages.

One might hope that he can at least complete 4C such that volume 4 is complete. I am skeptical that volume 5 or later will see the light of day, But I also cannot predict the future.

This comment made me check the history of the official TAOCP page [1] through the Wayback Machine. Volume 5 was estimated to be ready in 2009 at the very first snapshot (1997), in 2010 by 2003, in 2015 by 2007, in 2020 by 2010, in 2025 by 2015 which is the latest estimate today. At the first glance this looks like an eternal "10 years later", but note that that estimate didn't change since 2015 and the 2025 estimate is now only 3 years away. Does this mean that Knuth does plan to publish anything related to Volume 5 by that time?

[1] https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/taocp.html

Bookbinding is a great hobby. Or you can commission someone to create leather-bound covers for your book?

Yes - you can find book rebinders who can take a paperback book and make a bound book out of it.

Same - it's just a joy dropping into some random section and reading through, but my copies are a little abused by that practice. I'd love to have a second set for aesthetics and display.

R.A. MacAvoy has the titular character do this in her wonderful novel _Tea with the Black Dragon_

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