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The Art of Computer Programming, Volume 2: Seminumerical Algorithms (2nd Edition) Review by Andrew Ribeiro
Great classic
I am an undergraduate computer science student. I picked up the Art of Computer Programming due to the authors credibility in the computer science community. I must say this series lives up to the hype of the author, it really does go deep into the art of programming. Complaints that may arise from readers of this series is that the algorithms are not directly transferable to practical situations; in other words, this is not a programming cook book with algorithms written in a high level language -- such as C++ -- rather, algorithms are written in a lower level theoretical assembly language. If you are bright and are a decent programmer, you should not have a hard time transferring the algorithms presented into a high level language regardless, so don't let that prevent you from buying the series. Remember you are learning an art and you will not be able to paint gorgeous landscapes at first, but as you train your hand, you will be able to create ascetic code that make change the world like the likes of Knuth and such.
The thing I most enjoy from this series is that I know I am reading the work of a real computer scientist. As a student of the subject, it definitely gives me a sense of how real computer scientists think and express themselves. Even his guideline for reading the series is structured in a pseudo algorithmic fashion, complete with a flow chart! Buy this book if you really want to be a top notch computer scientist... it would help having a couple years of college level computer science training before reading the series, because you can follow the topics with greater haste and clarity.
Enjoy reading the series!
- Andrew J. Ribeiro