The Art of Computer Programming
Donald Knuth
127 people recommended it in 43 threads, 2009–2026.
8 commenters pushed back on it — worth reading the threads.
What people on Hacker News said
Anyone who doesn't want to learn MIX can just ignore those few parts of TAOCP; there's enough value in those books without them.
Have read only parts of Knuth / CLRS - They are good, but for real problems analysis , would prefer Sienna
TAOCP is more than an algorithms book, Knuth even have strategies for writing lengthy programs from scratch, how to build test libraries, how to optimize a program to make it cache memory friendly ect.
It’s machine language for a fictional machine, but there exist emulators for the machine. The code is runnable.
I generally go to Knuth when I'm really stuck--not just how to do something but sometimes how to frame the problem so it can be solved.
For years I've had the textbooks of CLRS and Skiena at home (and a pdf of Dasgupta) but they are used only in the event I need to drill down to understand a particular algorithm to solve a particular problem.
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