Programming is an art _ programming

Donnald Knut that computers are both a science and a technology, and that he spends almost all his life in "art".

There are comments that the role and status of the Art of computer programming (the arts of Computer programming) can be compared with Euclid's Theory of Geometry in mathematical history. Its author Donnald Knut (Donald Ervin Knuth) was thus awarded the 1974 Turing Award.

Art and Science

If you return to the roots of Latin, you can find ARS, artis these words, "skills." Now, when people talk about "art", the first thing that comes to mind is "art", such as painting and sculpture, but before 20th century, it was generally used in very different ways.

In the Middle Ages, a number of universities were set up to teach 7 so-called "liberal arts", namely, grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy. This is quite different from the curriculum of today's Faculty of Arts, where at least 3 of the 7 courses are important components of computer science. At that time, an "art" was a kind of thing designed by human intelligence. It is relative to the activity derived from nature or nature. In the Middle Ages, "art" itself usually refers to logic, which usually refers to the study of the three-paragraph approach.

In Donnald Knut's view, computer programming is now both a science and an art, and these two aspects complement each other well. The methods of science are generally characterized by logical, systematic, not personal, dispassionate, rational words, and artistic methods are characterized by artistic, innovative, universal, eager, irrational words.------------- These two seemingly conflicting approaches are of great value to computer programming.

Donald Knut's writings on the Art of computer programming, began in his PhD, planned seven volumes, the first volume "Basic Algorithm" published in 1968, the second volume of the "semi-Digital Algorithm" published in 1969, the third volume "Sorting and Search" in 1973, the fourth volume of "Combinatorial algorithm" Still in writing.

When Donnald Knut talked about computer programming as an art, he mainly thought it was an art form. As an educator and author, the main goal of his work is to help people write beautiful programs. "My feeling is that when I write a program, it may be like writing a poem or composing a composition." "Andre Eve has said that programming can give us intellectual and emotional satisfaction because it is the actual achievement of mastering complexity and building a coherent system of rules."

Some programs are elegant, some are ingenious, and some are brilliant. His assertion is that it is possible to write solemn procedures, noble procedures, and truly glorious procedures.

When he discussed the issue with Michael Faichil, he suggested that, as with works of art, computer programmers should start selling their original programs to collectors.

The art of computer programming has been hailed as a classic by its rich and profound content, some people even call it "the Bible of the computer", they are translated into Russia, Japan, west, grape, Hungary, Romania and other languages widely circulated around the world, its circulation created the highest record of computer books, Up to the mid 1980s, has maintained a monthly sales volume of 2000 volumes of momentum, become Addison-wesley publishing house since the establishment of the best sales books.

In order to transform typesetting technology in art

Donnald Knut to the "Computer Programming art" series of writing is Bosson, why the fourth volume has a long pause it. Originally, after the publication of the first three books, Knut felt that the very rough level of typesetting has affected the "computer programming art" of the printing quality. So he decided to overhaul the typesetting technology, thus suspending the "Computer Programming art" series of the preparation.

He had thought he needed only half a year to finish it in the second half of 1978, but in the end he spent 8 years, until 1985, when the Tex typesetting software finally stopped changing.

The first edition of Tex, written in the Sail programming language, runs on PDP-10 computers, the operating system of Stanford University's waits operating system. In the later version of Tex, Knut invented the so-called "literary programming" (literate programming), a programming method that automatically generates compiled source code and high-quality documents from the same source file. This language is called the web, and it generates the source code that uses Pascal programming language.

The version number of Tex is also very interesting. Starting with the third version of Tex, the upgrade is to add a new digit after the decimal point so that it gets closer to the value of pi/pi. The current version of Tex is 3.141592. This shows that Tex is already very stable and that any upgrades are very subtle. Knut once said, "the absolute last change after my death" was to change the number of versions to/PI, when any remaining loopholes were embellished by the program. ”

Tex is a very stable program, and Knut rewards anyone who can find bugs in Tex.

Each loophole is rewarded with an amount starting at 1 cents and doubling every year until the current 327.68 dollar ceiling. But Knut has never lost a lot of money because there are so few loopholes in Tex that the person who actually discovered the loophole would rather have it framed for a souvenir than to cash it after the check. The last bug in Tex has been discovered by Knut himself.

At the same time as designing Tex, Knut also designed a font generation program, Metafont. Metafont is independent of Tex, but has a very close connection with Tex. Metafont produces only bitmap fonts, which are not as effective when scaling fonts.

The Tex typesetting software and the Metafont font design software cost Knut a full 9 years of time and effort. They bring revolutionary changes to the entire Western printing industry. But the two apps did not make a penny for Knut and Stanford: Knut offered them as free software to the users. "I write these two programs out of love for books, and I want to give this area the necessary impetus," he said. I already have some fame, and my books are selling well. So I don't have to keep my monopoly on what I do for love. Moreover, mathematicians usually do not get paid for the theorems they find.

The art of Computer Programming, vol. 3

Donnald Knut Introduction

Donnald Knut is the pioneer of algorithms and program design techniques and is the inventor of Tex and Metafont, a computer typesetting system. He is Emeritus professor of computer programming art at Stanford University. Donald Knut received a number of awards and honors, including the American Computer Association Turing Award (ACM Turing Award), the Scientific Gold Award (Medal of Science) awarded by former President Jimmy Carter, the American Mathematical Society's Steele Award (AMS Steele Prize), And the highly respected Kyoto Prize (Kyotoprize), which was awarded in November 1996 by the invention of advanced technology.

Knut's writings are numerous, in addition to the three volumes of Art of Computer programming (translated by Manian, Su Yunlin, etc.), published by Addison-wesley Press, which introduces the five volumes of Tex and Metafont, which are published by the National defense industry Press. Computer and typesetting (Computers and typesetting) have long been spread out, and some of the following major works:

"The surreal number" (Surreal numbers,addison-wesley,1974);

"Practical Mathematics" (concrete mathematics,addison-wesley,1989);

The collection of Mathematical Writings (mathematical Writings, maa,1989);

Mathematics for algorithmic Analysis (mathematics for the analytics of Algorithms,birkhauser,1990, third edition);

"Writing Program Design" (Literate programming,csli,1992);

"The axiom and the Shell" (axioms and hulls,springer,1992);

Stanford Graphbase: Platform for Combinatorial Computing (the Stanford graphbase:a Platform for combinatorial computing,acm).

Among them, the book "Surreal Number" describes the University of Cambridge's Conway (J. H. Conway) The invention of a new type of the Conway, which Knut listened to his introduction, used a week to write the novel genre works. Critics point out that this is the first time in history that a major mathematical discovery has been introduced to the public in the form of fiction. Therefore, Knut's artistic talent is also extraordinary, if the computer is deeply attracted to him, Knut is likely to become a good novelist or musician.