People of ACM: Christos Papadimitriou

jacques_chester · on May 28, 2013

It bears repeating: if you haven't read his graphic novel Logicomix, stop what you're doing and get it. Right now.

jasim · on May 28, 2013

He also co-authored the excellent text Algorithms (Dasgupta, Vazirani, Papadimitriou) - http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~vazirani/algorithms.html. A previous thread on the text is here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4783301

This is homepage: http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~christos/.

jacques_chester · on May 28, 2013

Thanks for the link. This algorithms book looks like a concise read.

stephencanon · on May 28, 2013

His complexity textbook is also very much worth reading.

uulbiy · on May 28, 2013

It's a really great surprise that the only comment[1] in this thread is what I was about to comment. Let me repeat it: Read "Logicomix".

Bonus: If you are into it, study the characters' life (Russell, Whitehead, Wittgenstein, Frege, Godel).

Links:

http://www.logicomix.com/en/

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

Edit: [1]: It was the only comment when I commented

obviouslygreen · on May 28, 2013

Have we really managed to crash this with a small mention on HN? I'm trying to get there, but the brief description on what I can only call a barely-navigable site (unless I had the impression wrong, of a webcomic or some similar serial) is all I managed to load before the thing began responding -- very quickly, I might add -- with "currently offline" pages.

[edit: I guess it must be worse still that it's a GN (I love the format) and yet still died under what couldn't have been more than a few hundred requests... time to wonder about that shared hosting.]

andrewcooke · on May 28, 2013

really? his book about turing is pretty bad (all i can remember, having read it years ago, is being disappointed).

http://www.amazon.com/Turing-Novel-Computation-Christos-Papa...

emmelaich · on May 28, 2013

Nice choice, I believe many of his books are standards for their subject -- e.g. http://www.amazon.com/Elements-Theory-Computation-Harry-Lewi...

The ACM link has some complimentary words on Bill Gates. Quote:

    "He had moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico to run a small
    company writing code for microprocessors, of all things.
    I remember thinking: "Such a brilliant kid. What a waste."