> More than weird, will a 'tweet' have relevance 50 years from now? Even a social network? Seems using things that have a temporal cultural context is a bit iffy.
I don't think Knuth is under any illusions about staying relevant: The original editions had code examples for a machine having 6-bit bytes and used self-modifying code to store the return address of subroutines rather than a stack.
In later editions he updated the examples, but even with respect to algorithms the new fascicles make references to quite recent papers and results. The books as timeless as they are, are products of their time more so than most books on mathematical topics.
I don't think Knuth is under any illusions about staying relevant: The original editions had code examples for a machine having 6-bit bytes and used self-modifying code to store the return address of subroutines rather than a stack.
In later editions he updated the examples, but even with respect to algorithms the new fascicles make references to quite recent papers and results. The books as timeless as they are, are products of their time more so than most books on mathematical topics.