The Art of Computer Programming

The Art of Computer Programming is a comprehensive monograph written by Donald Knuth which covers many kinds of programming algorithms and their analysis. Knuth began the project in 1962, which was originally planned to be one book. The first three volumes were published in rapid succession, starting with volume 1 in 1968, volume 2 in 1969, and volume 3 in 1973. Volume 4 is currently in preparation, the first installment of which was published in February 2005, with additional installments planned approximately twice per year.

Related Topics:
Monograph - Donald Knuth - Programming - Algorithms

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Being considered an expert at writing compilers, Knuth started to write a book about compiler design in 1962. He soon realized that the scope of the book needed to be much larger. In June 1965, Knuth finished the first draft of what was originally planned to be a single volume of twelve chapters. This hand-written manuscript was 3,000 pages long. Knuth had assumed that about five hand-written pages would translate into one printed page. The publisher said that it was actually about 1½ hand-written pages to one printed page: thus the book would be 2,000 pages in length! The plan of the book was changed to have seven volumes, each with one or two chapters. Due to the growth in the material, the plan for Volume 4 has since expanded to include Volumes 4A, 4B, 4C, and possibly 4D. Volume 4A is likely to

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split further, since 7.1.1 and 7.2.1 together already exceed 500 pages.

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In 1976, Knuth prepared a second edition of Volume 2, requiring it to be typeset again. But the style of type (probably called hot type) used in the first edition was no longer available. So in 1977 he decided to spend a few months working up something more suitable. Eight years later, he returned with TeX, which is currently used for all volumes.

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All examples in the books use a language called "MIX assembly language," which runs on the hypothetical MIX computer.

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(Currently, the MIX computer is being replaced by the MMIX computer, which is a RISC version).

Related Topics:
MMIX - RISC

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Fortunately, there are free MIX emulators available for download.

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The famous offer of a reward check worth "one hexadecimal dollar" for any errors found,

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and the correction of these errors in subsequent printings, has contributed to the highly polished and continued authoritative nature of the work, long after its first publication. Another characteristic of the volumes is the variation in the difficulty of the exercises. The level of difficulty ranges from "warm-up" exercises to unsolved research problems, giving any reader a challenge.

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