TAOCP online resource

Question

I am a CS student, and am really astonished that I didn't know about Donald Knuth and his TAoCP. Now that I do, I really look forward to diving into it. Would going for the entire volume 4 be a good idea? Also, is there a place online where I can read up (especially, the algorithms and DS part) ?

thanks, Yati

Answer 1

The Art of Computer Programming is a very thorough and exhaustive reference work and is not particular light reading.

A good place to start is Knuths own http://www-cs-staff.stanford.edu/~uno/taocp.html

You can see for yourself an old version of Volume 1 at http://www-cs-staff.stanford.edu/~uno/fasc1.ps.gz (Postscript viewer needed) which explains MMIX (a hypothetical RISC like CPU) that Knuth implements his algorithms in.

Answer 2

You can read the prerelease fascicles for volume 4A as well. These are probably a better place to start than the brutally exhaustive description of MIX.

http://www-cs-staff.stanford.edu/~uno/fasc0a.ps.gz
http://www-cs-staff.stanford.edu/~uno/fasc0b.ps.gz
http://www-cs-staff.stanford.edu/~uno/fasc0c.ps.gz
http://www-cs-staff.stanford.edu/~uno/fasc1a.ps.gz
http://www-cs-staff.stanford.edu/~uno/fasc1b.ps.gz
http://www-cs-staff.stanford.edu/~uno/fasc2a.ps.gz
http://www-cs-staff.stanford.edu/~uno/fasc2b.ps.gz
http://www-cs-staff.stanford.edu/~uno/fasc2c.ps.gz

Also, if you're thinking of buying the volumes now, if Knuth gets 4B or 4C done before he dies you'll kick yourself for not waiting for the final authoritative 5-6 volume boxed set (aocp famously comes in a huge box, and with 4A it got even huger)