Ask HN: Is it worth reading The Art of Computer Programming now?

Posted by weavie 2 days ago

Just interested in peoples thoughts. It's been a long term ambition of mine, but now I'm now wondering if it will just be a waste of time.

I will probably never really need an in depth understanding of algorithms given I can just prompt "make this efficient". But if you don't understand them, how do you know the LLM is doing the best it can?

Comments

Comment by hackermailman 1 day ago

You compare algorithms in TAOCP to see which one is better for a certain problem that's the core of the book really and how Knuth himself describes them.

Then you get to explore all the different possible representations of these things because you can pick a new way to represent a graph that still follows all the math properties but is totally different than the usual representation.

AI could be used to write a VM to run your programs especially the old tiny MIX computer. The second volume is very relevant to AI right now which is all about numerical methods. MIT has classes on this https://github.com/mitmath/numerical_hub

Comment by kypro 2 days ago

"Worth" in a relative or absolute sense?

I guess it still has some value, but obviously no one will be paying you for your ability to optimise a sorting algorithm now.

Comment by slipwalker 23 hours ago

YES !

Comment by kuritzu 2 days ago

yes, it still is