The joke was that no one actually reads TAOCP. It was rumored that Knuth once described them as the "most purchased, least read" computer science books.

That rumor was also thoroughly debunked, here: http://markharrison.net/stackoverflow/knuth/

>The joke was that no one actually reads TAOCP.

While true, what surprised me is that Knuth's books are much more readable than you might expect from their reputation. TAOCP is a far cry from dry terse impenetrable tomes like Rudin.

One further than this: every time --- every time --- I sit down with TAOCP, even on stuff I assume is going to be basic, I learn something awesome. It is one of the densest amounts of awesome per page of any book I've ever seen.

And I am very not crazy math guy, too.

Check out Volume 4.

The "XOR linked list" comes to mind.

I think it's the sheer, awe-inspiring _quantity_ of high-level material that's hard to take. I've read parts of of TAOCP very deeply - implementing things, trying exercises, etc. and it is rewarding/exhausting. I doubt that I've worked through much more than 70-80 pages in this fashion from all of the books.

Given enough time, one could probably do this for the whole series to date, but I'd like to at least be working part-time before attempting it.

I never believed the story. It seemed out-of-character vulgar and hostile for Knuth.

Rudin's far from being a dry, terse, and impentrable tome. But maybe my standards are different.

The only Rudin book I've worked through is Real and Complex Analysis, and it is very dry indeed.

He also seems to favor some less intuitive proofs sometimes, which while correct and complete, leave the reader in the dark as to the intention behind it (the proof for the Lebesgue-Radon-Nikodym theorem given is an example of that.)

I found that the introduction to MIX (MMIX in the latest editions) at the beginning was hard to get through. I pick up TAOCP as a reference once in a while, and I agree that later parts of it are much more readable.

I like Bruce Eckel's writing. It felt like my brain was actually working better. :-)

Thanks, and there sayeth Knuth: "The web has thousands of tales that aren't true, about virtually everybody in public life. (Including the story about me and Pixar's CEO.)"

In fact, when Peter Sibel told Knuth during their interview that he was asking everyone if the had read TAOCP, Knuth said that even he hadn't read it.

I think the "joke" is supposed to be Jobs isn't really technical and is just a design guy. Its one of those stories that is used to "box" a person in and diminish them (happens in politics all the time). He knows more about electronics than quite a few commenters that repeat the story. Plus, I always saw it as an insult to Kunth, who always seems quite the gentleman.

No, the joke is that no human being is capable of reading Knuth tomes cover to cover. They are very dense, and cover some not-so-simple topics.

IMHO, neither. I have read it this way: Knuth thought that Jobs is insincere manipulator who tells people what they want to hear instead of just facts, and Knuth doesn't like that.

I, for one, would love to see you enlighten us about how you reached that colorful conclusion?

What exactly did you read to get there?

Pretty much how I read it though a bit overboard in characterization.

The story comes off to me as: Knuth calling Jobs out for flattery/embellishment. I bet everyone Steven Spielberg meets tells him he's their favorite director and they've seen all his movies. But if you look at the numbers for Empire of the Sun that just isn't possible.

I would tell Spielberg that I think Sidney Lumet was a better director.

I bet he'd take that gracefully, most people have both up in the top percentile.