My AI skeptic friends are all nuts (fly.io)

Hello, I am far from a smart person but I still wanted to give reading The Art Of Computer Programming Volume 1: Fundamental Algorithms by Donald Knuth a try but I don't understand at all how MIX computer he talks about works.

Are there any other resources that make it easier to understand the contents of this book?

Comments (2)

cbm-vic-20 · 5h ago

TAOCP is a product of its time. While the concepts are timeless, and as such still relevant today, MIX is similar to how many programmers built software back in the 1970s: with assembly code. If TAOCP was written today, it probably would use something else.

The good news is that, even though 1970s-era MIX assembly is much different than even modern assembly, it's pretty simple. The most confusing part is the field manipulation part of the instructions. Don't get hung up trying to memorize all of the instructions; take a look at the examples in the text, which are commented to say what they are actually doing.

My strategy when reading TAOCP: if I get stuck, move on to the next section, and come back to it later when I've had time to sleep on it...

sargstuff · 1d ago

MIX/MMIX is assembly language level programming.

MIX/MMIX home page : https://mmix.cs.hm.edu/

MMIX supplement : https://mmix.cs.hm.edu/supplement/index.html

---------

Per GNU MIX development kit (mdk)[0] intro "... a set of utilities for developing programs using Donald Knuth’s MIX mythical computer and MIXAL, its assembly language." The tutorial goes over architecture, instruction set, MIXAL related stuff and basic "getting started".

Something a bit above "bare metal programming"; Escape is an OS that runs on GIMMIX as a simulator for MMIX.[7]

DXL is a similar architechture.[1]

MMIX is more 'current'[2] aka easier to find tutorial information on RISC architectures.

Few 'intro to computer architecture'[3] -- depends on how want to approach. aka, high level overview, how things work 'bitwise" vs. abstract level one step above the bits, "stack"/instructional queue

A RISC Computer for the Third Millennium[4] related MIX/MMIX resources[5]

Random search engine 'computer architure' online courses pick[6]

----

[0](June/04/2025) : https://www.gnu.org/software/mdk/manual/html_node/index.html... GNU MIX Development Kit (MDK) : https://www.gnu.org/software/mdk/

[1] : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DLX

[2] : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MMIX

[3] : https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-best-introductory-texts-o...

[4] : https://github.com/ascherer/mmix

[5] : https://mmix.cs.hm.edu/links.html

[6] :https://github.com/Developer-Y/cs-video-courses#computer-org...

[7] : Escape : https://github.com/Nils-TUD/Escape GIMMX : https://homepages.thm.de/~hg53/gimmix/

My AI skeptic friends are all nuts (fly.io)

Self-hosting your own media considered harmful according to YouTube (jeffgeerling.com)

Photos taken inside musical instruments (dpreview.com)

OpenAI slams court order to save all ChatGPT logs, including deleted chats (arstechnica.com)

FFmpeg merges WebRTC support (git.ffmpeg.org)

Cloudlflare builds OAuth with Claude and publishes all the prompts (github.com)

Root shell on a credit card terminal (stefan-gloor.ch)

If you are useful, it doesn't mean you are valued (betterthanrandom.substack.com)

Square Theory (aaronson.org)

The Who Cares Era (dansinker.com)

IRS Direct File on GitHub (chrisgiven.com)

WeatherStar 4000+: Weather Channel Simulator (weatherstar.netbymatt.com)

The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine (cnn.com)

Quarkdown: A modern Markdown-based typesetting system (github.com)

A proposal to restrict sites from accessing a users’ local network (github.com)

Human coders are still better than LLMs (antirez.com)

How to post when no one is reading (jeetmehta.com)

Merlin Bird ID (merlin.allaboutbirds.org)

Cursor 1.0 (cursor.com)

Why I wrote the BEAM book (happihacking.com)

Show HN: I rewrote my Mac Electron app in Rust (desktopdocs.com)

Deep learning gets the glory, deep fact checking gets ignored (rachel.fast.ai)

US Trade Court finds Trump tariffs illegal (bloomberg.com)

Progressive JSON (overreacted.io)

My website is ugly because I made it (goodinternetmagazine.com)

The impossible predicament of the death newts (crookedtimber.org)

Precision Clock Mk IV (mitxela.com)

FLUX.1 Kontext (bfl.ai)

Show HN: My LLM CLI tool can run tools now, from Python code or plugins (simonwillison.net)

Covert web-to-app tracking via localhost on Android (localmess.github.io)

The Visual World of 'Samurai Jack' (animationobsessive.substack.com)

Show HN: Kan.bn – An open-source alterative to Trello (github.com)

Tesla seeks to guard crash data from public disclosure (reuters.com)

EU Commission refuses to disclose authors behind its mass surveillance proposal (old.reddit.com)

Japan Post launches 'digital address' system (japantimes.co.jp)

As a developer, my most important tools are a pen and a notebook (hamatti.org)

Show HN: I wrote a modern Command Line Handbook (commandline.stribny.name)

Show HN: Air Lab – A portable and open air quality measuring device (networkedartifacts.com)

Deepseek R1-0528 (huggingface.co)

Cinematography of “Andor” (pushing-pixels.org)

Prompt engineering playbook for programmers (addyo.substack.com)

The radix 2^51 trick (2017) (chosenplaintext.ca)

The Right to Repair Is Law in Washington State (eff.org)

Gurus of 90s Web Design: Zeldman, Siegel, Nielsen (cybercultural.com)

Figma Slides Is a Beautiful Disaster (allenpike.com)

Surprisingly fast AI-generated kernels we didn't mean to publish yet (crfm.stanford.edu)

Google restricts Android sideloading (puri.sm)

(On | No) Syntactic Support for Error Handling (go.dev)

Show HN: Onlook – Open-source, visual-first Cursor for designers (github.com)

Microsandbox: Virtual Machines that feel and perform like containers (github.com)

Is there some way to better understand TAOCP Vol 1 by Knuth?

Comments (2)