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Re: [ProgSoc] Programming Idea - Web App



On Monday 23 October 2006 16:28, John Elliot wrote:
> I'm going to write a web-based system for tracking items which are
> 'on loan'.

...the other thing I was thinking about doing was seeing if I could get 
any progsoc members to work with me in peer-reviewing the worked 
examples in the up-coming Volume 4 of Knuth's The Art of Computer 
Programming [1].

Knuth says:

	"Note to Internet friends: I'm extremely grateful that hundreds of you 
have taken time to read these drafts, and to detect and report errors 
that you've found. Your comments have improved the material enormously. 
But I must confess that I'm also disappointed to have had absolutely no 
feedback so far on several of the exercises on which I worked hardest 
when I was preparing this material. Could it be that (1) you've said 
nothing about them because I somehow managed to get the details 
perfect? Or is it that (2) you shy away from the more difficult stuff, 
being unable to spend more than a few minutes on any particular topic? 
Although I do not like to think that readers are lazy, I fear that 
hypothesis (1) is far less likely than hypothesis (2). I may have to 
remove material that nobody cares about. But I still cling to a belief 
that this stuff is extremely instructive. Thus I would like to enter 
here a plea for some readers to tell me explicitly, ``Dear Don, I have 
read exercise N and its answer very carefully, and I believe that it is 
100% correct,'' where N is one of the following:"

He then goes on to list specific work items. I imagine I'd struggle 
considerably trying simply to *understand* the problems and their 
example solutions, let alone stating my confidence in any proposed 
solution... but, I imagine that making the *attempt* would be valuable. 
I've had a quick glance at the material... it's pretty hardcore. Would 
anyone be interested in working through it with me? Perhaps we could 
just talk about it on-list..?

[1] http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/news.html











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