Donald E. Knuth in Python, cont'd

[Dan Sommers]

On Wed, 11 Apr 2012 13:20:29 -0700
John Nagle <nagle at animats.com> wrote:

>      You don't need those books as much as you used to.  You
> don't have to write collections, hash tables, and sorts much any
> more.  Those are solved problems and there are good libraries.
> Most of the basics are built into Python.

"Need" is an interesting word.  I don't have to write those
things, but I need to understand them well enough to choose the
right one, to use it effectively, and to debug it (or its
behavior) when things don't go as planned.

These days, every job interview includes (or should include!)
questions regarding which structures and which algorithms are
better (or worse) for which circumstances, not to mention
questions about algorithm complexity and big-O-notation.  I find
that people who *understand* the built-ins can *use* them much
more effectively than people who don't.

>      Serious programmers should read those books, much as they
> should read von Neumann's "First Draft of a Report on the
> EDVAC", for background on how things work down at the bottom.
> But they're no longer essential desk references for most
> programmers.

And that's the difference between "serious programmers" and "most
programmers."

Dan