Twenty-year plan for Donald E. Knuth
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Gaodener has been fifty-eight years old. He intends to spend another 20 years to continue his work, and you know that Donald E. Knuth is a public science that is recognized by the information science industry. TAOCP) [2, 3, 4] is famous, the original plan is a seven volumes, but only three volumes are completed. But maybe many people know that he has a Chinese name: "Gao Denna".
TAOCP's name is so big, and people who dare to touch it don't have much. Winter holiday I have read another book of Gaodener "The Stanford Graphbase" [1] for some reasons. What is the master's book?
Gaoden said in the preamble: Before writing TAOCP, he wanted to use a game called Ladders as an example of throughout the book. So I wrote a lot of related programs and huge test information, and finally set up a program / database. He wants this Graphbase to be used as a foundation of the Graph Rate, so that "Programmers-on-street mixed on the street" knows that computer scientists will do practical things. In addition, this set-up library is written in the way of him advocating, or it can be used as a living example. The last one, but it is the most important reason is that "To have fun". "Indeed, happiness is the main reason for this road, but I dare not recognize it. Computer scientists always have a bite work. Like, let others feel willing to pay for them high salary. But sooner or later this society admits that some work is still worthy - even if they are more interesting than anything. "
I can't help but laugh. Gao Dener is doing something else during the way of doing the work, and it is no longer the first time. TEX This is now useful to use the typesetting system that he is too TAOCP that is rolled out, so it is rolled up your sleeves to study the product of the computer typography? TEX consumes his ten years of light, and this Stanford Graphbase can be traced back to 20 years ago. Gao Daren seems to be never afraid of old?
Ladders This game is like this: pick two words in English, try to see a letter, turn a word into another one. But in the process it must remain an English single word. For example, the way Black becomes WHITE is like this:
Black -> BRACK -> BRACE -> TRACE -> TRICE -> TRITE -> Write -> White
Everyone can see that if each word is as a node, two words are only one letter, even a Edge, then this game can be used to find a path in two node.
But the graphbase interesting place is information. Gaoden collects a database containing 5757 single words. He referred to the 1971 Beeler to delete the old word, add new single words for this game. Gaodena has a big space to explain the standard of his choice: Name is not, so Knuth is gone; but GAUSS is already an electromagnet, so it is recorded. He patiently waited until E-mail was finally written by everyone to collect him into the database. I will start playing this database. Gaodener found 5757 single words, 774 Degree were 1 (only one EDGE that came out), ranking first. DEGREE = 2 has 727. The largest single word "Bares" and "Cores" are "Bares" and "Cores", and the 25 neighbors of "Cores" are DEGREE greater than 9. DEGREE = 1 The single word is 103 groups of two or two pairs of alpha, such as alpha-aloha, gonad-monad. Running a CONNECTED COMPONENT algorithm, discovering that most of the single words are 4493 single words Large component.
Gaodene has a method of displaying the frequency of single words in the article. In these 5757 words, "Which" is the most common, followed by "there" and "their". "OFTEN" has emerged, and it is often necessary than the appearance ("OCCUR").
It seems that Gao Denna is really fun. "To Have Fun", so we can imagine the real reasons for Gao Darn's book. After he built this information, it was found more interesting, and finally couldn't help but wanted to go.
Playing words, want to know who is more powerful in the US university football team? Gaodener has built a 120 team's 638 games. He also refers to the shortest distance between 128 cities in the United States, and it is correct after discovering that the previous person's information is obvious. After scanning Mona Lisa's smile, Gaodena demonstrates how to use Bipartite Graph Matching skills, re-exert this famous painting with a domain.
Gaodener's writing is kind and humorous. CWEB is his vigorous Literate Programming system, and he believes that everyone should have a set. "But there is no one who can always keep up with new software, so if you don't have CWEB, you don't have to feel too sinful." Next, he explains how to install Stanford Graphbase, this parakefile can give students Make. They do a good reference. What if you can't put it? Gao Deja, do you have a good prayer? Finally, he hopes that you can use these programs and information files like him. "Maybe there is a day you will not wait to see this book!"
Browse the book, I think Gao Dar is too idle, or is it still useful? He is nearly 60 years old, is still full of vigorous vitality and son, and all this is based on his deep skill.
The April DR. Dobb's Journal made a special interview with Gaidner [5]. Why write a book to half, but spent ten years in TEX? He said that Niklaus Wirth (Pascal, Modular-2 and Oberon designers) have always wanted to design aircraft, but he found that he would need enough tools, so he designed a computer language and made his computer. Gaodener also hopes that his book can be eliminated by the progress of technology. His book is still produced in a leading way, even if the scientific and technological progress of the book. Talking about another master Edsgar Dijkstra, he said that the power of Dijkstra came from his uncompromising 拗 拗. "The light is imagined with C writt, which will make him ill!" Dijkstra's skill is to derive, inspect the program, this and the industrial community continuously produces a MEGA, but the user It is clear that the actual situation of the risks of the bug is clearly not burned. Gaodener believes in both extreme intermediates. On the one hand, he agrees with the reliability provided by the Formal method, but he also knows the limit of this method in the large system. He tried his best to maintain his skill, so he is willing to provide a bounty to find a new bug in TEX.
Because Gaodener has no email, he has a web page [6], http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~ Knuth/ There is also a FAQ, you can see the Chinese name. Of course, when everyone is asked: When is the fourth volume?
He said that TAOCP's fourth volume will be divided into three parts, 4A: Enumeration and backtracking, 4b: graph and network algorithms and 4c: Optimization and review. Since 1997, he will be a unit at approximately 128 pages ( Gao Darn seems to use 2 power to do units. He pays to find out the wrong bounty of TAOCP is also $ 65536 points) to distribute parts of the fourth volume to everyone, listen to the views of the parties. If everything goes well, the fourth volume will be officially completed in 2003. The completion time of the fifth volume is set in 2009. If the fifth volume is backward, he will re-organize one to three books of TAOCP and update the content. Next, he will concentrate all the important contents of the five volumes in a book. After that, he didn't start the six and seven volumes. Therefore, Gaodener is at least to live to 2020 ....
In order to complete TAOCP, Gaodener has retired, and the life of a hermit. He doesn't have to use E-mail, not to meet visitors, cancel most of the speeches and travel. He said that he has to work with a BATCH, but can't put things SWAP to swap. He made a manner at home, and he would play the piano to entertain in his home. If you will play the piano, he is willing to meet you, come to a four-handed land.
Why is so excited? In DDJ interview, when he was asked if he could be from TEX and MetaFont Turning, he said, once a person can feed himself, can have a safe place, the rest is what he can do for others? How to make some contributions to the group.
So he hopes that the program creators don't take the algorithm as their own private property. The program should be readily read and understood, because the more people can understand it, it can play a bigger influence.
Maybe he is also based on this idea to continue TAOCP writing? In his web page, for his "this big thing", he made this note: "I tried to do my best to learn some of the fields in computer science, then put these knowledge abstract into everyone. It is easier to understand, let people who don't have this kind of learning without so much time can absorb them. " For this purpose, he must read more than 20,000 files and then concentrate them into two thousand pages. What he wrote is not the most popular, but he hopes that he can extract from the new technology from the new day.
I can't help but think of the topic discussed by the previous period: Is the expert in the trained dog? Should we be an expert? Gao Denn is undoubtedly an expert, but his master's education and style may give us a lot of inspiration.
Reference
[1] Donald E. Knuth, The Stanford Graphbase: a Platform for Combinator Computing, Addison-Wesley, 1993
[2] Donald E. Knuth, The Art of Computer Programming, Vol 1: Fundamental Algorithms, Addison-Wesley, 1973
[3] Donald E. Knuth, The Art of Computer Programming, Vol 2: Seminumeric Algorithms, Addison-Wesley, 1973
[4] Donald E. Knuth, The Art of Computer Programming, Vol 3: Sorting and Searching, Addison-Wesley, 1973
The Art of Computer Programming has a version of Japanese, Russian, Spanish and many other countries. Among them, the Chinese version of information is as follows.
Chinese translation by guan jiwen and su yunlin, pei xue He Chazhao,
Beijing
: Defense Industry Publishing Co., 1985
[5] Jack WoEhr, An Interview with Donald Knuth, Dr. Dobb's Journal, April 1996, P16-P22
[6] Donald E Knuth's WWW Page: http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~ Knuth/http://www.geekchic.com/repliq6.htm also has a small access. Gaode's favorite language is CWEB, the favorite sport is a baseball, thinking that there are many people who are worthy of respect. Gaodener will re-assemble the publication after recently finishing his papers in a more light way. The booking of this book is not an expert in computer science, and it seems to be worth reading. This book will have eight, the first two volumes have been published:
[7] Literate Programming,
Stanford
,
California
: Center for the study of language and information, 1992
[8] SELECTED PAPERS on Computer Science, Stanford's Center for The Study of Linguistics and Information and Cambridge University Press, Spring, 1996
[9] SELECTED PAPERS ON Analysis of Algorithms, To BE Published
[10] SELECTED PAPERS on Computer Languages, To Be Published [11] SELECTED PAPERS ON Design Of Algorithms, To Be Published
[12] SELECTED PAPERS ON DIGITAL TYPOGRAPHY, TO BE PUBLISHED
[13] SELECTED PAPERS on Discrete Mathematics, To BE Published
[14] SELECTED PAPERS ON FUN AND GAMES, TO BE PUBLISHED
