TAOCP is very much worth reading, but it does emphasize the "science" part of "computer science". That's not 1960s minutiae, either, that's just academic rigor.

TAOCP is very much worth reading, but it does emphasize the "science" part of "computer science". That's not 1960s minutiae, either, that's just academic rigor. TAOCP creates challenges for many readers, because it does address most problems with an enormous amount of depth and breadth (but at the same time, offers a pretty exhaustive treatment of many topics) and requires a level of mathematics that may be daunting for beginners. If you want a more accessible text in the same vein, you may want to give Mehlhorn's and Sanders' "Algorithms and Data Structures: The Basic Toolbox" a whirl, as it is freely available online [1]. It is a text aimed specifically at undergraduates and isn't as ambitious as TAOCP, but it still is something that may require a fair amount of effort to follow. [1] https://people.mpi-inf.mpg.de/~mehlhorn/ftp/Mehlhorn-Sanders-Toolbox.pdf https://people.mpi-inf.mpg.de/~mehlhorn/ftp/Mehlhorn-Sanders...