Algorithm of God--donald E.knuth (Turn)

Begin to worship before the introduction of the first ~

Milwaukee is the largest city in Wisconsin, USA. On January 10, 1938, just after Christmas, Milwaukee citizens lived in peace as usual. In the coffee shop, someone is talking about President Roosevelt's new bailout policy, and some are talking about whether to limit citizens ' guns. And more people, while tasting the Milwaukee famous national beer, while listening to the broadcast real-time situation: Invading Japanese troops landed in Qingdao. No one thought that this quiet day would be in the annals of the city. This day, a print manager at Milwaukee Lutheran High School, was delighted to usher in a healthy son. He took a loud name for his son, a name that, in the near future, became the banner of computer programming Art: Donald Ervin Knuth.

For your convenience, please allow me to play a 39-year-old story first. On the eve of Knuth's visit to China in 1977, Yao's wife took a Chinese name: Gartner. In the following story, we use this name to call him.

Gartner was gifted, and his extraordinary intelligence was revealed at the age of 8. At the time, a candy dealer held an interesting game among the children, demanding to write as many words as possible with the letters "Ziegler's Giant Bar". The referee prepared a list of 2,500 words, but he underestimated the ability of the little players, and Gartner was surprisingly able to write more than 4,500 words, without a doubt winning the championship. He won a TV set for the school and won a lollipop for each of his classmates, and his post-match speech was that I could write more.

Gartner's high school attended his father's Lutheran high school, during which he published his first scholarly article in his life. Nonetheless, the young man, full of talent and personality, did not put his mind on science, his main business was music and composition. His teacher, even his own, is doubtful whether he will be able to study maths smoothly after he enters university. This idea created a small inferiority complex for Gartner, even though his average score was the highest in school history. However, it is said that the real genius is 1% inspiration and 99% of the sweat, which is not exaggerated in Gartner, 18-year-old he, after entering the university, did not yield to mathematics, but spent countless spare time, a lot of practice math problems, this effort to add his talent, He soon surpassed the other students in maths. Instead of focusing on the opportunities and talents that some scientists cannot imitate, we pay more attention to how they face difficulties and setbacks. Gartner tells us that there is no way to snag, but to take time to work.

Gartner's University is the Institute of Technology, where he contacted the IBM650 computer, which led to the dream of Gartner's musicians coming to a dead end, and the scientific genius finally re-occupied his heart. In 1956, after his first use of IBM650, he energetically lift Catinaccio to believe that the procedures described in the instructions, must not be compared to his own writing. So Gartner began to learn programming, his first program was factoring, and soon after, Gartner had a lot of experience with programming. Gartner also worked part-time on the school basketball team, so he wrote a program that automatically assesses the value of each player and makes the team's coaches appreciate it. The incident also attracted coverage from CBS, and later a photo of Gartner, the team coach and IBM650, was printed on IBM650 's brochure. In 1960, Gartner broke the practice of the school with a proven record of excellence, and at the same time obtained two degrees in both bachelor and Master's degree, so let's do a subtraction and count Gartner's age geometry.

Gartner then went from the Great Lakes region to the West coast of the United States and went to Berkeley for a PhD in mathematics. During this time, his programming career also formally began, he provides software services, for a variety of different machines to design a variety of strange compilers, once a program sold to $5000. The most noteworthy is the test method that he put forward to the ALGOL60 compiler. Do not know whether you still remember ALGOL, this mass production Turing Award of Aladdin Lamp. At that time, we introduced that the design goal of ALGOL60 was to support recursion, while in designing the compiler, the processing of recursion was very complicated, so it often failed because the compiler was immature. Gartner has written a very simple test program, called "Man or Boy test", the common names "is men 67". Gartner said that as long as the ALGOL60 compiler to compile my program, if the result is 67, it means that the compiler is pure man, otherwise it can only be counted as a small boy.

In 1963, 25-year-old Gartner successfully received his doctorate and stayed at Berkeley to teach. The year before graduation, although still a graduate student, but Gartner has been designed to design compilers and reputation of the computer industry. So the famous Addison-wesley publishing house and his manuscripts, asked him to write a book about compilers and program design. It would have been a very common thing, but you see who Gartner is, and soon after, he made it a spectacle in the history of computer science. 1962 about the draft, Gartner has been written to 1966 has not handed in, during which he graduated, but also teaching, and finally someone else's publishing house anxious. The editor found Gartner, saying that it's been four years and how much you wrote, Gartner said, before writing 3000 pages of manuscripts. Edit big embarrassed, busy ask all 3000 pages how do you still not pay, Gartner Answer said, urgent what, I haven't written to the point yet. The editor is completely mined, saying that you have a lot of books ...

The art of computer programming, so it was born.

This is Gartner, which is the ultimate in the human world. He is not a trick, his heart save Yigujin son, to write A and Newton's "philosophy of Nature," The mathematical principles of the masterpiece. He initially planned six volumes, and later felt that the figure was not good and changed to seven volumes. In 1968, the first volume of the Art of computer programming (the arts of computer programming, the lake-TAOCP) was officially published. The title of this volume is called "Basic algorithm", but the difficulty is not low. Bill Gates spent a few months reading this volume and doing a lot of exercises, and then he said, if you want to be a good programmer, read this basic algorithm and make sure you can solve every problem in it. However, Gartner is more sharp than gates: If you don't understand, don't be a programmer.

In the same year, Gartner moved to Stanford University and became a professor while continuing to write books while taking a PhD. A year later, TAOCP's second volume, semi-numerical algorithm, was formally published, and after three years, in 1973, the third volume of "Sorting and finding" was into print without. The three books were instantly shocked by the computer industry and sold more than 1 million of them within a few years, still the highest classic in programming books. There are some clever and ingenious algorithms for us, in the three volume of books in handy, abound, this we will say later, there is an important thing. According to Gartner's plan, the book is a total of seven volumes, but now just finished three volumes, it is greatest. To what extent, the Lianturing prize-awarding committee was unable to sit, and they had done something unprecedented. According to the Convention, the winner of the Turing Award is the achievement life, to pass the time examination, but Gartner is the exception, in his seven volumes had just finished three volumes, ACM decided to issue the Turing Award for it immediately:

Awarded the Gartner Turing Award for its outstanding contribution to algorithmic analysis, design and program design in programming languages, in particular its famous "The Art of Computer Programming" series.

This was the 1974 ACM Turing Award, and Gartner took the 9th Turing Bowl in history. This is undoubtedly a privilege for Gartner, because he is only 36 years old, and until now, he still retains the youngest record of winning the prize.

This was the 1974 ACM Turing Award, and Gartner took the 9th Turing Bowl in history. This is undoubtedly a privilege for Gartner, because he is only 36 years old, and until now, he still retains the youngest record of winning the prize.

Half of our story, but the genius of Gartner has been awarded the Turing Award. The reader may ask, what is said below, he just goes on to write the book, and then take the doctor, don't talk nonsense. If you think so, it's a big mistake, and if he does, he's not Gartner. In advance, this seemingly logical plan was quickly broken and the planned seven volumes were not completed until today. Want to know what happened, and listen to the tell.

In a previous article, Gartner planned to write a seven-volume "computer Programming Art", and did not expect to have just finished the third volume and was awarded the Turing Award by ACM. This has never happened in the history of Turing Awards. We remember Noel at the Paris conference, whose Turing Bowl was 45 years later than his award, and he waited longer than the time when Gartner won. However, Gartner, after winning the award, once again surprised the world: he announced that he had to break the pen, because the typesetting tool is too poor to undermine the beauty of the book.

Gartner's move was a shock to the outside world, and it was conceivable that he had been in a barrage of doubts. It is said that Gartner must be run out, take the Turing Bowl, and accept it; it was said that the Turing Award was too high for the first three volumes, and that Gartner was unable to face such pressure and had to find a reason to retreat, and others said that after winning the prize, it was fully demonstrated that his purpose in writing the book was to be utilitarian. They questioned that the Turing Bowl was completely wrong.

However, it is not difficult to understand why if we really turn TAOCP to read. I think that the study of the algorithm can be divided into three layers of state. The first layer is the complexity of the analysis algorithm, which is the computer professional college students generally mastered the skills, to achieve this realm, can be said to be into the algorithm of the door; the second layer of the State is to improve the complexity of the algorithm, after analysis to continue to think about ways to reduce it, which can be considered to understand the algorithm; is to find the optimal complexity of the algorithm, not only to improve it, but also to what extent? is to prove that, I changed the algorithm is the optimal, you can no matter how to improve, and then improve on the violation of the laws of the universe.

Gartner is a typical third kind of person. You might as well see how many of the best algorithms are given in TAOCP, and Gartner is the heart of the world of arithmetic. Gartner is such an extreme pursuit of the ultimate, he forced himself to do everything is insurmountable. How can he tolerate this book, which he sees as a lifelong career, tied to poor typography? So, no matter how others questioned, he eventually left his writing on the side and began to study typography and typography. Gartner gives us a glimpse of what a real personality is, not just a 18-ear hole, or 36 holes in jeans. Individuality is to follow your heart at all intersections, and let all the obstacles that affect your pursuit of your dreams come to your knees.

Gartner, the rest of the pen, is ten years old. In this 10 years of work, the pursuit of the ultimate is like an invisible hand, pushing him to create three loud results, the most influential of which is the typesetting system Tex. If you use MS Office Word to write a paper, you will experience the death of the heart: constantly adjust the font size, line spacing, indentation, columns, if this is not what, you write a few math to see? But in Tex, these troubles are almost completely nonexistent, and the only thing you need to do is tell it what you want to write. If time is life, it can be thought that Tex is saving the lives of scientists every day, saying that it has promoted the development of science is not too. Tex is a publishing revolution, until now is still the global academic typesetting of the perfect standard, the text of its expulsion of the United States, especially the beauty of mathematical formula, let people heartily sigh: Ah, a millimeter can no longer move.

In addition to its functional beauty, Tex is a software product that is also breathtaking. Its version number is not the natural sequence, nor the year, but starting from 3, constantly approaching the pi (3.14,3.141 ... Currently the latest version is 3.1415926). Gartner once again with the action announced, I this thing, there is no big improvement, at most only small repair, make it closer to perfection. He also set up a special bonus: who found a mistake in Tex, paid him $2.56, a second mistake of $5.12, and a third $10.24 ... And so on As we all know, legend has it that some kings have lost their land because of this exponential game, and Gartner, as a master of algorithms, knows more about the horrors of exponential growth. However, he dared to make this rewarded, the result until today, he also did not pay much money, see Tex through what kind of thoroughly tempered. The ten-year-old toy, who had questioned the Turing Award's wrong people, shut up and even said, "Oh, for this Tex, you might as well give Gartner a Turing bowl."

The second result, Metafont, is a system for designing fonts. For its value, a word can be summed up: the computer industry most understand the font of the two people, one apple jobs, the other is Gartner.

The third achievement is the literary programming (literate programming), which shows the artistry of the program design vividly. Gartner says a good procedure is not just to be clear and easy to read, but to be able to read the aesthetic and read the mood. God, the mood, a row of computer code, like poetry full of artistic conception. Professor Gao, are you out of your mind?

' You're crazy, ' said Gartner, ' to see me show off you. So, on the basis of C language, he developed a set of Cweb system, in addition to using it to write out the Tex program, unexpectedly also used it to write a book called "Stanford graphbase" books. Gartner smiled, I can write a book in programming language, not to mention the artistic conception of the program, my slogan is: The programmer can also get a Pulitzer Prize (this is the world's highest award in the field of journalism).

The literary programming also gave Gartner a small revenge. In our 6th chapter, Dicos Beecher, who proposed a "structured programming", advocated not to use "goto" statements in programming, and Gartner had to be the devil, and the result was Dicos called "no Structure". This is very well, Gartner Sly smile, Hey, if you don't mix with me, you are "no culture" (literate also have "culture" meaning).

The ten-year-old Gartner, who held on to the three achievements, dismissed all doubts. It was then that he gave an understatement to the rest of the ten years ago: If a person wants to do things beautifully, he must be in harmony with God, and now God has finally asked me to write four volumes.

His pen, and took it up again. In the process of writing the fourth volume, in order to help the reader to play a good mathematical foundation, in order to face TAOCP in the mathematical peak, he also wrote a "concrete mathematics". This book has a Chinese version, translated into "concrete mathematics", I always feel a little inappropriate. What exactly does concrete mean, Gartner says, meaning that I don't teach those soft math, and I'm going to teach math that throws on the ground and can hit a bell. He was said to have spoken in class, and several classmates turned away from the classroom--they were students of the Civil Engineering department, and thought that Gartner was talking about concrete (concrete in the field of civil engineering meaning "concrete"). When it comes to Gartner's teachings, there is an anecdote that he can judge the quality of the job by checking only the No. 314 page when he corrects his homework. To this end, the No. 314 page of our book is used to salute Gartner.

In 1992, Gartner announced early retirement and stopped using e-mail to concentrate on writing. Gartner, who took 28 PhD students, thought 28 was a good number, and then announced that he would not accept students. Still, he left a look forward for the people who wanted the division to be from him: he opened a public class called Computer musing, and every time he asked a question, if anyone could solve it quickly, Gartner would sign his doctoral dissertation. I wonder which comer can get such an honor, we will wait and see.

2008, after TAOCP's first three volumes came to market 30 years later, the fourth volume finally awaited, and Gartner, is already a white-haired guxi old man. In a word, a lifetime, a lifetime, a glass of wine, his love of computer science, so that he spent a lifetime of the series of painstaking efforts. At the end of this chapter, I would like to use a word to describe this genius computer science master, but after thinking, I can only think of one word: God.

I think that although Gartner is a devout Christian (who has written a book on biblical research), he will gladly accept it. As Linus, the author of Linux, said, "God told me in a dream that I made the best operating system."

"I didn't say that," Gartner replied.

Algorithm of God--donald E.knuth (Turn)