History
Donald Knuth in 2005
In 1976, Knuth prepared a second edition of Volume 2, requiring it to be typeset again, but the style of type used in the first edition (called hot type) was no longer available. 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.
The famous offer of a reward check worth "one hexadecimal dollar" (100HEX base 16 cents, in decimal, is $2.56) for any errors found, and the correction of these errors in subsequent printings, has contributed to the highly polished and still-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, providing a challenge for any reader. Knuth's dedication is also famous:
- This series of books is affectionately dedicated
- to the Type 650 computer once installed at
- Case Institute of Technology,
- in remembrance of many pleasant evenings.[nb 1]
Assembly language in the book
All examples in the books use a language called "MIX assembly language", which runs on the hypothetical MIX computer. (Currently, the MIX computer is being replaced by the MMIX computer, which is a RISC version.) Software such as GNU MDK exists to provide emulation of the MIX architecture.
Some readers are put off by the use of assembly language, but Knuth considers this necessary because algorithms need to be in context in order for their speed and memory usage to be judged. This does, however, limit the accessibility of the book for many readers, and limits its usefulness as a "cookbook" for practicing programmers, who may not be familiar with assembly, or who may have no particular desire to translate assembly language code into a high-level language. A number of more accessible algorithms textbooks using high-level language examples exist and are popular for precisely these reasons.
Critical response
American Scientist has included this work among "100 or so Books that shaped a Century of Science", referring to the 20th century, and within the computer science community it is regarded as the first and still the best comprehensive treatment of its subject. Covers of the third edition of Volume 1 quote Bill Gates as saying, "If you think you're a really good programmer . . . read (Knuth's) Art of Computer Programming . . . You should definitely send me a résumé if you can read the whole thing." [nb 2] The New York Times referred to it as "the profession's defining treatise".