How The Art of Computer Programming was ruined for me

http://anuragramdasan.com/weblog/on-how-TAOCP-was-ruined-for-me/

by anuragramdasan • 13 years ago

194 113 13 years ago

The fonts on this page are too large. Make them smaller!

sukuriant2• 13 years ago

And zooming in does not make a left-right scroll bar. That's what I had to do to read it. That font is really, really tiny on my 1900 x 1200 screen

anuragramdasan18• 13 years ago

Eeek, sorry. Fixing it at the moment. :)

CapitalistCartr• 13 years ago

"Control +" is your friend.

markbernard• 13 years ago

Fonts are not too large. The base font on any web page should be 16point.

deletes2• 13 years ago

Imagine getting a Xeroxed copy of the illegal version of the book.

pmiller27• 13 years ago

Lions' commentary on Unix was passed around for years like this before it was allowed to be officially published. There's a grand tradition of samizdat in academia for stuff like this (mostly pre-prints, though).

deletes2• 13 years ago

I was hinting at the latest Xerox fiasco.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6156238

peterkelly• 13 years ago

There's a reason why the version you bought was Rs 400, not Rs 5000. That much of a price differential should be a red flag.

anuragramdasan18• 13 years ago

Actually almost all the Indian editions of the book are much more cheaper than its US based price in Dollars. And when you look at the paper quality, it feels like the price is justified.

Also not to look over the fact that both are published by PearsonEd. The US version by Addison-Wesley and the Indian version by Dorling-Kindersley. Both are PearsonEd subsidiaries.

pmiller27• 13 years ago

Indeed. My current copy of CLRS3 is a like-new Eastern Economy Edition paperback. I paid $20 or $30 for it off Amazon versus $92 list price or $55 on Amazon for the hardcover, and I considered that to be a good deal.

bradleyjg2• 13 years ago

Paper quality is apparently just one of the ways they save money. Another seems to be editorial effort.

pmiller27• 13 years ago

I've had good experiences with Indian editions of CLRS (though, granted, it's not the same publisher). But for TAOCP, I sprung for the real deal, a brand-new 4 volume set. I knew I'd be keeping these very books for the rest of my life, so I made sure to get the latest, high-quality edition.

arjie• 13 years ago

Maybe in this case, but South Asian editions are always super cheap. Physics and Chemistry books will be grayscale, so you have to try harder with some charts but otherwise they're all worth it. If I'd spent 400 dollars on every textbook I bought, my parents would've been bankrupted.

gcb0• 13 years ago

Sorry, you know nothing about pricing a product.

The initial cost (paying knuth) is already paid for ages ago. The editorial work is extra for each edition, and probably paid on the local market prices.

The costs now are printing and distribution. I will guess it is cheap. Specially with local market prices.

All that is left to price the product now is how much profit you can extract from the market and still make a sale. Don't we discuss A/B testing of price here over and over?

In the USA, people can be convinced to pay $150~$800. in India they probably lose the sale if they charge R1000.

In both cases, they make the sale with the most optimum profit available at each market, while providing no real benefit for the consumers who still can't get a digital version.

bradleyjg2• 13 years ago

Ideally you'd like to segment the market geographically like that, but with the doctrine of first sale floating out there (recently upheld in this exact contex[1]), it can be very tricky to pull off. Now pharmaceuticals on the other hand ...

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirtsaeng_v._John_Wiley_%26_Son....

JimmaDaRustla• 13 years ago

Makes a good case for advancing digital versions of text books...

anuragramdasan18• 13 years ago

Probably. But still printed books are going to be the most widely used approach and giving such a treatment to education related books are never good for students.

reikonomusha2• 13 years ago

If there is any book that you should get in paper form, it is TAoCP.

This is one book where the author has taken great care, and decades of work, to truly build the book from the ground up.

The book, the fonts, and the style were developed for paper. Knuth even has 5 other volumes of books containing the instructions and source code to reproduce almost every single curve, stroke, and space you see in the books.

I think advocating digital publishing is probably good, but not for all things. Books shouldn't be treated as source code with continuous deployment. Even one word on one page can massively restructure the rest of the document, making it extremely difficult to coordinate and fix.

What I think should be fixed is the dissemination of authentic books at a reasonable price, for especially students who typically don't have much money at all.

pmiller27• 13 years ago

I agree wholeheartedly with this. As an owner of all 4 volumes currently out, I have to say I enjoy everything about these books, except for the choice of MIX as the programming language. :P

jpatokal• 13 years ago

Don't forget the typesetting: Knuth wrote TeX because he was unhappy with the alternatives.

mikevm3• 13 years ago

Last I heard from the publisher, they are working on digital editions of TAoCP, not sure when it will be ready though (I was told that it will be of the quality that people expect from Knuth).

soperj2• 13 years ago

I managed to get a digital version of it off tpb.

phaus9• 13 years ago

I honestly don't understand how you can live in India and expect shit like this not to happen. People in India don't even have the reasonable expectation of riding a public bus without getting raped to death, how cold you possibly expect the authorities to care about counterfeit books?

India is a beautiful place, with lots of brilliant, talented people, but until their local and federal governments start observing and enforcing the rule of law, it's going to remain one of the shittiest countries to live in.

saganus3• 13 years ago

Speaking as someone who lives in a... well, "under-developed" country to be pollitically correct, I can say that even when you expect shit like this to happen and are even prepared for it, there's certainly no way to make it better if no one complains or says anything.

At least the author seems to be making an effort to rise above this "shit that happens". How? by studying and working hard to be able to get a shot at, either leaving the country, achieving a better quality of life (i.e. more money, whenever money does make things better, which is certainly not all things) and/or by complaining and raising flags about this and hoping that enough fuss will make some poeple move their asses and change things.

pcx663• 13 years ago

People in India don't even have the reasonable expectation of riding a public bus without getting raped to death

That was very, very offensive. Are you an Indian? or at the least been to India? My mother has been using public transport for 25 years (now traveling upto 150Kms for her job). She never had a problem. Show some data and or shut up your arrogant mouth.

harlanlewis• 13 years ago

I think he's referring to a recent spate of rapes in India that received a lot of exposure in the US press.

TIME just posted an article about high-profile gang rape in India a couple days ago: http://world.time.com/2013/09/02/india-fury-over-gang-rapes-...

pcx663• 13 years ago

People in India don't even have the reasonable expectation of riding a public bus without getting raped to death

Why so many negative votes? What was wrong about me being offended by such an insensitive statement. The statement was factually incorrect. Is it not arrogant to comment on a country like that without data?

anuragramdasan18• 13 years ago

I understand your sentiments here and do not wish to argue much with it. I share similar concerns too. There have been many(and I mean MANY) accounts of rape in India in the recent year, but that still doesn't mean every time you stand next to an Indian, your chances of getting raped skyrockets.

Having said that, we are working on trying to fix things. I use the word 'we' in the sense that I work with few NGOs who have made women's safety their primary concern and are achieving success in it too. CodeForIndia being one such organization that I am a part of at the moment and also am an active developer in a project about womens safety. Of course, there is a huge chance we will all fail miserably in our attempts, but it would still be better than spreading pessimism all over and not acting at all.

Also while dealing with such wrongful activities, I don't think prioritizing is a good idea. I am not comparing this with rape. I am talking about all corrupt or negligent activites. A lot of people are trying here. Not as many as we'd like to, but still.

I just do not like that a country of over a billion is discredited due to the acts of a few. Neither am I saying that the acts of those few should be ignored, of course not. I would rather appreciate some action being taken over unproductive negative criticism.

phaus9• 13 years ago

I know that the majority of Indians aren't rapists, it's just the institutional acceptance of the rapes that do occur that make it seem so much worse. There are people, such as yourself, who are trying to help, but at this point, it seems as if you are in a David vs Goliath situation, only without a sling. It doesn't seem to be the general population that is the problem, its the government, and governments are notoriously difficult to change.

jacalata• 13 years ago

Where did you get the impression that the book was counterfeit?

phaus9• 13 years ago

Counterfeit is probably the wrong word to describe it, but he didn't get what he paid for. He got an obsolete version of the book that had been reformatted and manipulated to the point where to him it seemed to be unusable.

blauwbilgorgel• 13 years ago

I honestly don't understand how you can live in India and expect shit like this not to happen. People in India don't even have the reasonable expectation of riding a public bus without getting raped to death, how cold you possibly expect the authorities to care about counterfeit books?

I'm quite disgusted to see this poor comment. I don't understand how it is adding to the topic at hand. You went from a re-printed book with an error to rape and politics in the country of the author. The article had nothing to do with either.

Even if India has the highest rape statistics in the world, that doesn't add any relevance to the point you are making, which basically boils down to: You don't have a reasonable expectation of riding a public bus without getting raped to death, therefor you should expect "shit" like outdated re-prints. What?

Rape statistics are not even clear enough to make the point that India has more cases of rape than the USA (due to differences in reporting rates and definitions of rape). Some experts estimate rape statistics to be about equal [1]. Homicide statistics are a lot clearer in both reporting and definition and there the USA "beats" India. [2]

India is a beautiful place, with lots of brilliant, talented people, but until their local and federal governments start observing and enforcing the rule of law, it's going to remain one of the shittiest countries to live in.

Is that your final conclusion? That India is a shitty country to live in? To an article about an Indian re-print of Donald Knuth's book with an error in it?

If you had used this argument template for an American author, to drag American politics and crime rates into an unrelated topic, you'd be ridiculed and derided.

[1] http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2013/01/02/are-women-safe... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentiona...

phaus9• 13 years ago

My point was that in India, the authorities don't preserve justice even when serious crimes have been committed, so its doubtful that they would care about things as insignificant as false-advertising.

If a society's legal system is demonstrably corrupt, the rest of the society is bound to follow.

You could argue that the same thing applies to the United States, and I would agree. Right now, however, I feel that the stage the U.S. justice system is in is that of the functional alcoholic. Its still working for the most part, but it could completely fall apart at any time.

Is that your final conclusion?

Yes. It is a shitty place to live, unless you come from a privileged family. It obviously doesn't have to be, and it might not always be but as of today, it is. If you took a hundred random people and asked them which country they would rather live in(Out of the two), probably at least 75 (And this is generous) would say the United States, even though we are in the middle of a downward spiral. If you asked them which country they would rather live in as a lower-middle class citizen, only an imbecile (or perhaps someone with family in India) would choose to live in India.

The United States botches rape trials on a regular basis, but still, in spite of our own corrupt system, it's significantly better than what's going on in India. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that you are correct, and that the per-capita rape statistics are similar. However, in the United States, you have a much better chance of bringing the perpetrator to justice.

grecy• 13 years ago

I honestly don't understand how you can live in India and expect shit like this not to happen. People in India don't even have the reasonable expectation of riding a public bus without getting raped to death

I honestly don't know how you can live in America and expect nasty shit not to happen. The murder rate in America is 4.8 times higher than the country I live in. [1]

(see how offensive/stupid that sounds)

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentiona...

Interestingly, when I consider how dangerous America is compared to my home country (4.8x), that's the same as you looking at Mexico, Sudan, Panama or Brazil. The American media thinks Mexico is a murderous hell-hole, which, statistically speaking, is what we should (and often do) think of America.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2398257/Chris-Lane-m...

phaus9• 13 years ago

You stating that America has an astronomical murder rate doesn't sound stupid or offensive at all, it's true. I'm ashamed that we haven't been able to solve that problem, but I'm not going to take offense when someone points it out to me, to deny reality is delusional.

I honestly don't know how you can live in America and expect nasty shit not to happen. The murder rate in America is 4.8 times higher than the country I live in.

The reason that I have an expectation that it doesn't happen, is because all levels of my government openly oppose the act of murder.

Things that are true shouldn't offend us. America has lots of faults, and I talk about them quite often.

There's a distinct possibility that anyone with access to a computer in India is largely immune to a significant portion of the government's corruption and the caste system. Also since you like statistics, try taking a look at pretty much any corruption index survey to see where India lies.

saganus3• 13 years ago

How the art of reading articles was ruined for me: By using pt 8 fonts...

anuragramdasan18• 13 years ago

Sorry about putting you through that. Will fix it. Ctrl+ for now please? :)

saganus3• 13 years ago

Hahaha. Yes, actually Ctrl + mouse wheel up. I just couldn't stop myself from taking a shot at the title.

My apologies. I never meant it to be serious. :) Btw, the subject in the text is indeed interesting and disheartening at the same time.

jadyoyster• 13 years ago

Just curious, how come you don't have a minimum font size set up?

I never run into this problem due to having done so, but I see a lot of people complaining about it...

hollerith• 13 years ago

Maybe it is just because my eyes are worse than yours, my monitor has more pixels per inch or I keep my face farther away from the monitor than you do, but when I set a minimum font size, I want to set it to a value large enough to break some sites. (By "break" I mean the text runs off the right side of the screen or overflows into other elements.) But then there is no way to work around the breakage without tediously going back into preferences or about:config, lowering the minimum font size, then raising it again when I am done with the problematic site.

In other words, the reason I do not set a minimum font size is that Firefox treats the minimum font size as a hard limit to be observed even when the user explicitly asks to reduce the size of the text (which, again, I would need to do whenever the site does not render sanely at my preferred font size).

So I find myself increasing the size of the text many, many times a day. At least recent versions of Firefox allow me to add to the navigation toolbar a "[-|+]" widget that lets me increment or decrement the size with one click. Also, Firefox often remembers the text size for the next time I visit the same site.

Hope that answers your question.

I seem to recall a few sites' breaking (becoming difficult to navigate or fathom) if the text size is even slightly larger than the default size set by the site, so I am curious as to why you do not have that problem. (I seem to recall Amazon or Ebay being one such site.)

coldtea• 13 years ago

My biggest concern was that if in the future I end up buying a new book, how can I be sure it is the same book that I expected to be delivered, without any page messups or other oddities.

Just buy the American edition, problem solved.

anuragramdasan18• 13 years ago

Kind of beats the point of having regional editions so that users can get books at a reasonable price, doesn't it?

mtdewcmu3• 13 years ago

Is there any way you could find it at a library?

ilyanep• 13 years ago

It sucks. They make cheap [x] so that more people can afford to buy [x] for a lot of values of [x], and sometimes the cheap version just doesn't live up to what you want.

eksith• 13 years ago

"At this point, all I hope is that PearsonEd makes the changes and fixes the pages in the new version and releases it. Until then, I shall have to fix my copy of TAOCP on my own or buy an expensive original edition."

How many developers (students and those entering the field) in India can afford such a high price? We take a lot of the knowledge we get in the West for granted, but the rest of the world isn't so lucky.

reikonomusha2• 13 years ago

Like others here, as soon as I read the first couple of sentences, I mostly expected the result.

I paid about $150 for my volumes, and while it was more than I wanted to spend, that's actually quite a deal. That comes out to less than $40 per book, and each book is so dense and authoritative that another equivalent book probably costs on the order of $100. In other words, at least in the USA, if each book was sold separately as textbooks, I wouldn't be surprised if it cost $400 in total.

As you have detailed, Knuth's work here is seminal, and he will probably continue writing until the end of his life (and TAoCP won't be completed by him). If you intend to truly read and understand all of the material he has presented, then you're in it for the long run. Unless you are very educated or a researcher in the field, this is probably years worth of work. This includes reading all the mathematics, understanding it, and doing the exercises. (Of course, not all exercises can be reasonably done by anyone, as some of them are actually open research problems.)

Because you'd be in it for the long run, cheap paper copies are a bad idea, unless you don't mind pages falling out and deteriorating. Doing a semester-long course in some subject? Okay, that's fine. But purchasing for personal reasons the opus magnum of one of the greatest computer scientists? That feels a little different.

Although you've already paid a measly one-tenth of the price already, I'd consider paying the full price, and take your first as just a tax on the lesson learned. In the USA, many of us would get a 5-10% markup anyway (sales tax), so it's not all that devastating.

Edit/Addendum: Lastly, one important thing. For anyone reading this comment: While there is prestige in finding errors, that should not even be remotely close to the reason you purchase the books. The checks, in their original intent, are small awards for finding mistakes, and only somewhat artificially have they turned into something more. The true reward, as cliché as this sounds, is being able to read Knuth's prose and learning from it.

If you believe that having such an achievement will slingshot you ahead in business or academia, this is almost surely false. While the award is nice to get, it won't give you much in return. I own two checks, and they're on my résumé, but I don't think they've carried much weight, if at all, at the multitude of companies I've applied for and been at. I think I've been asked about them only once, and even that time, the interviewer wasn't interested in hearing about numerical algorithms or boolean satisfaction.

anuragramdasan18• 13 years ago

Yes you do make a great deal of sense. I guess my initial worry was that if the book would make any sense to me at all. It comes with a reputation of its own. I didn't seem like a good idea to spend 5000 bucks on a book that I might end up staring at for a few weeks and then give up. Now I understand everything in the book, but do not trust its content. Regret that.

mtdewcmu3• 13 years ago

For me, it would cheapen the experience if I didn't trust what I was reading.

rtkwe2• 13 years ago

If you look at the price it's in rupees, so 5000 rupees is just 74 USD. The author bought a $5 version of TAOCP. The lack of quality isn't surprising.

(Unless Rs. isn't Rupee, but Google thinks it is)

pmiller27• 13 years ago

Regarding the exercises, I think it's pretty reasonable to do everything up to difficulty 25/M25 (even HM25 if you have the background), plus one or 2 between 30-40 per section. If you do that, you'll make progress at a reasonable pace and probably get about as much as you practically can out of it.

swah• 13 years ago

Can you check your solutions somehow?

dsuth• 13 years ago

I recently purchased these as well (for around $250 on Amazon + shipping, a steal considering they were going for around $400 locally), and I have to say, I'm so glad I didn't end up going for the cheap Indian copy which was available via AbeBooks at the time, after reading this story. What a terrible thing to do to a classic.

anuragramdasan18• 13 years ago

In response to the Edit/Addendum, the reason it was mentioned was to emphasize on how rare was the chance of me finding an error in the book.

My reasons for buying weren't to win a Knuth reward check. I wasn't even sure of being able to understand the book, let alone find an error.

eigenvalue• 13 years ago

The most upsetting part about this is that some of Knuth's valuable and limited mental energy was wasted because of some idiot publishers trying to make a buck and being sloppy.

emiliobumachar• 13 years ago

Most likely much time. The unique part of this case was blogging about it. There's a whole bunch of those books out there.

damianknz• 13 years ago

Don't let the page numbering ruin these books for you as the contents will provide you enjoyment for the rest of your life. Its great that you were able to get your own copy of them. At university in New Zealand TAOCP was on the recommended reading list for CompSci but the library only had one of each volume. You could only get them out for _3 hours_ at a time. Years later I was in a bookstore with my girlfriend a the time and I saw the 3 volume set for _$NZ 500_. She secretly went back the next day and brought them for me for my birthday. We are now married.

chetanahuja• 13 years ago

She's a keeper.

tzs• 13 years ago

Those "reprint editions" could actually be useful. Consider the section of Volume II called "How Fast Can We Multiply?" (or something close to that).

That section has undergone major changes for each edition. The current edition is fine if you just want to know the best answer (as of the time that edition was written). However, if you also read the earlier two editions, you will get a deeper understanding of the material.

susi222• 13 years ago

Offtopic: Concrete Mathematics is the best book I've ever read. If you have a chance get it. It requires very very little pre knowledge of math.

icelancer• 13 years ago

I searched it on Amazon and saw numerous reviews saying you need a strong grasp of discrete mathematics, which is hardly "very very little" knowledge of math. I didn't study serious discrete math until my upper classes in undergraduate school.

Grue3• 13 years ago

I can confirm that it's pretty math heavy. I was considered a math genius in my school and I was having trouble with the later chapters.

egl2001• 13 years ago

The books you have are just fine. The books were high quality when they first came out. Thousands of us studied the first printings without ill effects. Besides, you have the opportunity to test your reading by looking for errors. Just relax and enjoy a masterpiece.

kamaal• 13 years ago

This is really strange.

Low price editions, or LPE's are the best things to have happened to Indian students. Without them I couldn't have cleared my engineering exams. And I have never faced problems like these in the past nor do I remember any body among my friends report such problems. In fact we only have praise for LPE's.

I am wondering if this is like a one-off goofup on the part of the publisher. Which it can very likely be.

And the price has nothing to do with it, basically because eventually everyone realizes that only thing that results from high prices is piracy. So you might as well sell at a decent price which customers are ready to pay.

nsomaru2• 13 years ago

so where would be a good source of quality books in India?

anuragramdasan18• 13 years ago

As of now, I order books mostly over Amazon. They ship the 'real' edition. Its expensive but that's better than the other alternative.

Also, I never claimed all the Indian books are flawed. You wouldn't know until you buy one. Your best bet would be to check one out from a library, use it, figure it out for yourself and then decide whether to buy an Indian edition or the real one.

nsomaru2• 13 years ago

Thanks for the Amazon recommendation.

I am an expat (repat?) living in rural India and do not have access to libraries.

brownbat2• 13 years ago

This goes beyond foreign versions of textbooks.

A friend recently recommended "The Broken Sword" by Poul Anderson. The trouble is, the text of the 1954 work was watered down in 1971. So it's apparently important to read the right edition, or so Michael Moorcock warns. [1]

I've had small online booksellers assure me they have the edition I want. When I open the package in the mail, it's never the right version. When I contact the merchant to ask how I can find the right edition, they just refund my money and stop talking to me.

Other sales people have told me they have no warehouse access, they have no way to confirm what's getting in the boxes. The easiest way for them to find out the edition of a book is to just ship it to me and have me let them know.

You'd think you could have a meaningful discussion with a bookseller about editions. I know it's not something that matters for every sale, but you'd think at least those few who choose to deal in books would occasionally notice that not all books with the same title look identical, and start to wonder why.

We've moved from a world where I can put my hands on a book, glance at the copyright page, feel the paper, see the condition, to one where every version of a work, from annotated to abridged, can be lumped together as a fungible commodity.

I know, Bezos moves a lot of paper, this isn't going to keep him up at night. But if I get one "old man yells at clouds" rant, this goes in mine.

[1] http://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/jan/25/featuresreviews...

piqufoh• 13 years ago

There's a (not so small) online bookseller with the version you're after

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Broken-Sword-Fantasy-Masterworks...

Apparently the Gollancz Fantasy-Masterworks versions are true to the 1954 version.

brownbat2• 13 years ago

My latest attempt was with one of the booksellers on Amazon claiming to have that edition. I sort of gave up on the site after that fell through.

I'll give the .co.uk version a try, thanks.

EzGraphs• 13 years ago

Yes - really a rather profound change. The entire way new books are produced has changed as a result as well. Print-on-demand in particular can result in you literally having a "one-off" edition of a book. The benefit is quicker integration of corrections. Am not sure we really fully understand some of the negative consequences...

talkingquickly2• 13 years ago

Slightly off topic but can anyone recommend a good book on algebra to get back up to speed before attempting to read these?

treerex• 13 years ago

"Concrete Mathematics" by Graham, Knuth and Patashnik is probably the best preparation for tackling TAoCP, though it is not light reading either.

You could also look at "Mathematics for Computer Science" by Lehman, Leighton, and Meyer. It is available at http://courses.csail.mit.edu/6.042/fall10/mcs-ftl.pdf .

talkingquickly2• 13 years ago

Perfect, many thanks.

anonyblahblah• 13 years ago

I always say that pirating games and films was simply better in every way than paying for them. Better quality, support, more convenient formats, minus the DRM. My conscience has been hardened by all the times i have been screwed over by crippling DRM when using something I have paid for. Pirated versions, of course have this removed for you.

Sadly, It seems the same is beginning to apply to books as well. Publishers should take heed of this unless they want to follow the fate of music and movie industries.

How The Art of Computer Programming was ruined for me

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