[random314]

> But TAoCP is the backbone of everything else. It's all the messy details and the messy details matter a big part of the time.

Can you show me an example of the messy detail that taocp discusses, which other textbooks skip and where this messy detail matters in a big way. Since you have been reading this book for 30 years - you should have at least one example.

As an aside, taocp is not the backbone of "everything else".

[brudgers]

Knuth his self offers the mathematics as something that is not for all readers. There are also the 40+ rated exercises and the historical accounts. In volume 4a there are even 40+ rated exercises entailing finding the errors in historical approaches to combinatorics.

Not that that’s anything I am doing. But I just pleasurably whiled away a couple of hours reading about satisfyability and Horne and Krom clauses and Boolean median functions. The section on Horne clauses had some interesting implications for expressing bnf like grammars in Prolog and the Boolean median functions gave me a different way of thinking about consensus. That’s what happens when I pick Knuth up and why I keep doing it even on the thinnest of pretexts e.g. this.

Anyway a backbone is a backbone. Not having fingers and toes and elbows doesn’t change that.

[random314]

Once again you have not provided any messy details that matter in a big way and cannot be found in other books on the topic.

[brudgers]

You are right.