I was driving over the hill to our Cupertino office this morning listening to the Morning Edition show on NPR radio. Seldom do I hear something about computer science or our industry. I was pleasantly surprised to hear a story about Donald Knuth and his series of books called “The Art of Computer Programming”. Knuth talks about the book series and also about his reward for finding mistakes in the books (he’ll send a check for $2.56 for each mistake found). Notice the $2.56? It’s a wonderful amount (at least to programmers). He says during the interview that many people who’ve been sent checks have never cashed them instead chosing to frame them.
From the NPR web site, "Donald Knuth is legendary in the computer science world for writing a series of must-have reference books called The Art of Computer Programming. Part cookbook, part textbook, part encyclopedia, these books are also considered by many to be technical and personal works of art."
Knuth is working on Volume 4 of his book series: Combinatorial Algorithms
Donald Knuth’s web site at Stanford University
The Art of Computer Science series of books:
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I bought Donald’s book way back around 1989, and subsequently, in between 1996-1998.
Since I’m no professor, I’ve only a bachelors in Computing and Information Systems, I don’t understand some of the contents.
And I really wonder, who the book’s target audience is.
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