[fizixer]

I've heard that Bill Gates comment before but I recently bought the books and looked at random pages. I concluded that the kind of person you become after having gone through TAOCP, especially doing exercises and not just reading, you'd be way overqualified, to the point of being useless, for Microsoft or any other 'business-oriented' software company. Microsoft research might hire you, but, they have to look at your publications and you might need to have a PhD degree, so that's also a toss up.

Therefore, if you decide to go through TAOCP cover to cover, know that it's either for your own interest, and that you're willing to become academic/research minded instead of s/w-development minded. After that you might wanna join a PhD program (if you don't have it already) and do research or something.

[nickpsecurity]

The person that read TAOCP would have strong understanding, both theory and practice, of implementing algorithms for all sorts of stuff. They'd also be on a team that likely had people with more hands-on or business skill. The combination would make for more effective solutions. As presty pointed out, Microsoft does a lot of work on applications that require solid algorithms. They also have a research division that does cutting edge stuff. See VerveOS and SLAM driver verification below for examples of what they did with various tech they developed.

http://research.microsoft.com/pubs/122884/pldi117-yang.pdf

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/slam/

Microsoft Research in general http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/

[presty]

are you really saying that from going through TAOCP someone would be overqualified and useless for working at a company that builds operating systems, dbms, programming languages, virtual machines and compilers?

[fizixer]

In a way, yes. (I assume 'going through the book' includes doing exercises, not just reading).

Think of it this way. Is a PhD in combinatorics from the math department, with exposure to programming, the most suitable candidate for the job of building OS, DBMS, PL, VM, Compilers? I don't think so. If (s)he is interested in such a role, (s)he can definitely do a good job. But (s)he would have to be aware that roughly 90% of what (s)he learned and enjoyed while doing combinatorics research would not be relevant to the job. The hiring would depend on a combination of how much of that lifestyle (s)he is willing to give up for this job, as opposed to trying to find a tenure track faculty position where (s)he could continue pursuing research, and how much the software company thinks about the enthusiasm of the candidate (to switch from research to software development).

Going through TAOCP and doing exercises and learning relevant math is a close approximation to that, IMO. Keep in mind that a significant number of exercises in TAOCP are about proving theorems.

[nickpsecurity]

If Bill (a) has the position(s) and (b) says TAOCP master is best candidate, then yes the person is "the most suitable candidate" for whatever job he has in mind. The End.

Besides, I can teach anyone software development. Kids do it with Scratch, average people did it with BASIC in school, and lay business people used COBOL, Excel, and Visual Basic. I'm sure someone who can learn everything from algorithm optimization to assembler coding can handle C++ with some on-the-job learning. In all likelihood, they already were programming in various languages if they tried to get such a job.

Nonetheless, Bill says they're a good hire for stuff at Microsoft. That's where it went from "I wonder" to "Yes they are." No need to speculate.

[MichaelGG]

Certainly there are non-"business" type software divisions in Microsoft that can use such people. Compilers, maybe?

[brudgers]

That's plausible since TAoCP is a book about compilers...we just have to wait for chapter 12.

[nickpsecurity]

It's actually a book about algorithms, especially general ones. It has chapters on compilers or related areas (eg parsing). See here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_Computer_Programmin...