>>11937560Knuth's book series is a great review of algorithmic techniques, particularly those that yield good programming solutions, from the 70s to the 2000s, but as a tome it's not exactly useful. What you should do is his book concrete mathematics, do as many algorithms problems from various sources and papers as you can, read complexity, do more mathematics like algebra, analysis, number theory, combinatorics, etc etc.
If you want to do well in programming, these books aren't really about programming - they're reference tools for sophisticated algorithms that could come up. In that context, if you're interested in TAoCP, you're most likely interested in theory and CS, to which you should just do it properly and not rely on a collection with limited scope.
